


The Saving of Lazarus

by crescentmoonthemage



Series: Sing to Me Finality [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 007!Q, A LOT of Angst, Agent!Q, Angst, BAMF Q, Honestly Johnlock only exists here because Q is a Holmes brother, Hurt/Comfort But Mostly Hurt, James Bond Being James Bond, James Bond Has Issues, James Bond is an asshole, M/M, Pre James Bond/Q - Freeform, Q is a Holmes brother, Q is a master of sass, Q is not a Damsel in Distress, Snarky Q, general spy shenanigans, if you read this for johnlock you will be disappointed, you and me and espionage makes three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-01-02 05:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 35,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21156002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescentmoonthemage/pseuds/crescentmoonthemage
Summary: Everyone lives two lives. The second one begins when it is realized that the first is temporary.This is a story about salvation. Or rather, a story about two men and their two lives. Bond: old, weary, nothing left to lose. Missing. Q: Young, powerful, nothing left to lose. Ever-present, ever wondering.This is a story about abandonment. Or rather, a story about fidelity. What one has to be loyal to when the world is crumbling. Q: Queen and Country, Earl Grey tea, Eve and Mallory and his brothers. James Bond. Bond: unknown. Nothing.This is a story about legacy. The brave new world. The Fighting Temeraire. Or: how to pick up the pieces after Bond leaves, with Q's car and Q's stupid, shameful heart.Someone has to be 007, right?





	1. Prologue: Deservation

**Author's Note:**

> To anyone finding this who knows me in real life... or god forbid if I told any of you how to find this... here it is in all its infamy. This is the "I got blackout drunk and decided to write a James Bond fanfiction" fanfiction.
> 
> To anyone just tuning in: Hello, my name is Crescent. Once upon a time, about six months ago, I got extremely drunk while waiting for some friends and decided that the only good way to pass the time was to write a James Bond fanfiction. I don't remember much of that night, but when I checked my computer the next day I found that I had ten pages written-- and they weren't all that bad. Thus, "Lazarus" was born. Over the months following, I edited and wrote until I had over 20,000 words. And we're not done yet, folks. Stay tuned-- much adventure is yet to come. 
> 
> Thanks for reading,
> 
> C

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I didn’t ask what you deserved, James,” he says, voice oddly soft and echoic in the cavernous space. “I asked what you wanted.”

Prologue: Deservation

“How did she have time?” asks James, absentmindedly.

“Who?” asks Q, without looking up from his computer. It’s absurdly late; they’re the only two in the whole of Q Branch. James shouldn’t even really be here. James doesn’t really even know _why _he had decided to stay. He’d checked in from a mission a few hours before, returning his gun in one piece (_take that, Q), _and, instead of going home, had just sat down on one of the stools and watched Q quietly work. Perhaps it’s because now that M is dead, he has no one else’s house to haunt. Perhaps it’s because Skyfall was only days ago, and Bond’s right ear is still ringing from the explosions, and he just wants a moment of quiet. Perhaps it’s because he’s lonely.

Whatever it was, Q hadn’t questioned. He’d worked, as he always had. Somewhere around two, he’d gotten up to make tea, and had brought two mugs back, and they had clinked them together when Q got a line of his code to work successfully. By now, it’s almost morning. James really should go home, if he’s going to make it in to report in to M at some reasonable hour.

Instead, he says: “Mansfield. She had a husband, kids, a whole life outside of Vauxhall. How did she have time for all of that _and_all of us?”

Q’s still not looking at him, but his eyes tighten behind his glasses, and his fingers still on the keyboard for a moment. “Is that what you want, 007?”

Bond laughs a little, raspy. “The part of me that deserved a life like that died with Vesper Lynd.”

Q turns away from his computer to regard James with eagle eyes. His glasses are low on his nose and he blinks, tiredly, as he pushes them back up. His eyes are green, deep brownish green. How had Bond never noticed that in all his three years of knowing the man?

“I didn’t ask what you _deserved_, James,” he says, voice oddly soft and echoic in the cavernous space. “I asked what you wanted.” It’s halfway to a whisper, somehow strangely intimate. For a moment, it feels like a confession, almost, but Bond doesn’t know which one of them is confessing, or what they’d even be saying if they were.

James sits back on his stool, considering. “A long drive,” he says, after a moment. “Wind in my hair, and a good bottle of Scotch waiting for me at the end.” The answer feels like a lie. Not a full lie, but a half-truth. He doesn’t know why, but it sits uneasily in his stomach.

Q focuses that dark, eagle gaze upon Bond for another second, a bare second, before he turns back to his computer. It’s as if the answer doesn’t satisfy him either. “What kind of Scotch?” he asks, typing quickly.

Bond is oddly disappointed; the moment, if it was such a thing, is over before it begins.


	2. Part One: Fidelity. Chapter One: The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> M looks at Q then, really looks at him, and Q resists the urge to shudder. “Bond wants someone he can save,” he says, after a long, long moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive the formatting issues. It looks fine on Word, but then the Archive went and screwed it up and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Should be better in the future.

Part One: Fidelity

Chapter One: The Aftermath

It is one year later, and two days after everything, that M calls Q into his office. Two days after C’s death and Blofeld’s imprisonment, two days since Bond vanished from the burning wreckage of Westminster Bridge with the most beautiful woman Q had ever seen (not that Q, as a habit, kept a categorical log of beautiful women, but _she_was definitely up there, if cold as Greenland before climate change), two days since they had trekked back to Six in the middle of the night, weary, footsore, and with a gaping hole in their middle that each of them pretended didn’t exist.

Twelve hours since Bond had come back down the auto lift and _knew_, in that blockhead way of his, the way that told him he was always going to get what he wanted, that he wasn’t going to find an empty Q-branch. Twelve hours since Q had given in and let Bond take the Aston, _his_car, loaned to Bond for Skyfall and returned in pieces, twelve hours since Q had sunk back against his desk, banged his head on the ground and breathed in, out, in, out, but still felt tears prick at his eyes.

Sixteen hours after this, M calls Q into his office.

“Two orders of business,” says M in his matter-of-fact way. “Sit, please.” M himself is by the window, staring distractedly at London in the way that M-the-former seemed so fond of, in the short time Q had the chance to know her.

Q does. “Is this about the fallout with Nine-Eyes?” he asks.

M looks over a shoulder, giving him the calculating, slightly exasperated expression that Q always thinks belongs on someone’s grandmother, perhaps his own. She’s thirty years in her grave, but it somehow still fits. “In a way,” he says. “First, the easy part. I’m telling all my senior officials to take three days off. That’s you, Eve, and Tanner. You all need it. Go bugger off and stick your toes in the sand somewhere for a few days, get wasted on cheap brandy _or _expensive brandy, whatever you prefer, just don’t do it here. I need you all at your best for the Board of Inquiry meeting on Tuesday, and god knows you lot haven’t slept since this mess started. As soon as we’re done here, you’re to head home, or somewhere else. And _don’t _let me catch you doing work remotely. I want you to have a day, for once in your life.”

“But what about national security?” Q asks, fully aware he has both feet squarely on the line between wit and insolence. He’s not toeing it, he’s doing a full-on Irish jig upon it.

M gives him another look that says he knows exactly what Q is up to and that it is only being accepted because Q is brilliant and incomparable and M has enough other shit to deal with that is truly and honestly vital. “Britain survived long enough without your meddling behind its firewalls, it can certainly go another few days. Now, onto our second matter.” He sighs, sitting down in his chair at last and pouring two fingers of scotch, one for Q, one for himself. Q takes the glass but doesn’t drink, just staring at the amber liquid. ‘_58 Macallan, _he remembers Bond saying once, a lifetime ago. _You pick well. _They had been drinking in the Branch. It had been late. Bond had smiled a genuine smile. For what reason they had been drinking, Q can’t remember. It seems all the space in his ever-growing mental file cabinet labeled _James Bond _that had once contained happy times has been replaced by leaving.

He supposes it’s for the best. He supposes if it weren’t, he wouldn’t get a choice in the matter anyway.

(Here is a memory that is too recent a wound to forget: champagne in the carport. A bottle meant for celebration but drunk alone in his apartment. Bond knew all too well what he was doing, though, and Q’s cats kept him company, he supposes. He beat Call of Duty that night in an angry rage and every opponent had blue eyes.)

M’s next words are calculated and drag Q back from reverie as if they were buckets of ice. “I know you’ve been helping him.”

“Helping who?” Q asks, with as much tact as he can muster. He swirls the scotch in his glass to give himself something to do, somewhere to look.

M’s rage is quick, incalculable in its enormity, and above all, terrible. “Don’t toy with me, Q, you know exactly who I mean. You reported the car as _decommissioned _and _unsalvageable _in the middle of the night last night in a report that totaled three sentences. You’ve never written me a report shorter than four pages in your life. And don’t get me started on the SmartBlood. Forty-eight hours of error time, _certainly._Where even is the bloody vehicle? I suppose I’ll never know now, because _surely _the SmartBlood is acting up again.” His voice cracks like a whip, but Q has been running on a deadly combination of Earl Grey and willpower since Switzerland and is far past caring. “Fire me if you want,” he snipes back, and is surprised to find himself deadly calm.

M sighs again, all that legendary anger dissipating with that one exhale of breath. “If I fired you, Britain really _would _have a national emergency.”

“You’re demoting me, then” says Q. He drinks the scotch, throwing it all back in one swallow and forcing himself to withhold the involuntary flinch after. It is the only sign he gives Mallory that he is discomfited, none other. Not an inch.

The elephant in the room, he thinks, would be impressed.

M crosses his arms, sitting back in his chair, cocking a singular eyebrow. “You’re Q. That’s all there is to it. No one else could be my Quartermaster.”

Q calculates, redraws, and comes up with nothing. “So why am I here?”

“I assume you’ve read Bond’s file.”

“It’s classified, sir.”

M gives him another long-suffering look, but the hint of amusement tinting it gives Q hope that his hide isn’t being cooked _just yet_. “Has that stopped you before?”

Q gives him a flash of a smile in return, a bare ounce of acquiescence. “I read it once, just after Skyfall.”

“And what do you remember of Vesper Lynd?”

Q speaks like he is reading from a Wikipedia article, to hide any emotions his exhaustion might let slip. “She was a Six accountant assigned to Bond for his time in Montenegro. While they were there, he fell in love with her and left the agency to travel the world with her, until she betrayed him and drowned in Venice. He returned, but Mansfield wrote that he wasn’t the same.”

M rubs his forehead, seemingly considering his words. “There were others, as well, over the years,” he says, finally. “He was married once, you know, until she was killed. And on their wedding day, nonetheless. I’m sure he’ll marry that nasty Madeline woman too, if only to give himself some semblance of peace.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Q asks, although he knows _damn well _why. He still will not yield. His brothers taught him better than that, anyway. “Bond is gone.”

“Somehow, I doubt that,” says M. “After all, his women are always so breakable. So… inconstant. And he always comes back after they’re gone.” He pauses for an instant. “Did he ever tell you he’d break into the old M’s house after missions, even before he debriefed, even before he’d washed the blood off of himself?” His subject change is deft, but not quite enough to avoid notice.

Q smiles a bit at the thought before he can stop himself, but bites his tongue at it once he realizes. “Why would he?”

M shrugs. “Fidelity, I suppose. It was the one place in the world he felt truly safe. The lion in the viper’s den.” He looks at Q then, really _looks _at him, and Q resists the urge to shudder. “Bond wants someone he can save,” he says, after a long, long moment. “All the women he’s ever truly loved have been wraiths, dark haired, pale, beautiful. Some of them have been entirely competent, entirely _strong, _but one way or the other, they all, somehow, somewhere, needed to be saved. From death, from drowning, from an abuse, from themselves. Bond likes to save, he gets high on it. He causes so much death, so much destruction, that he thinks if he can save _just one life, _just one, that it will be enough. Funnily enough, all his women usually end up dying in the end anyway.”

An odd silence stretches between them, so Q asks again, “Why are you telling me this?” It is not the right question and they both know it, but they are both deft liars. It is, after all, how M and Q and all the others got where they were, and Q knows there is no true honesty in a world such as the SIS.

M turns back to the window, fingering his scotch glass, but not before Q sees the sad, sad smile on his face. “No one else could be my Quartermaster.”

“What does that fact have to do with Bond?” Q asks, but he is deadly quiet, because something within his heart has just gone very, very still. A spike of horror stabs through his chest.

“When Bond’s damsels get saved,” says M, even quieter, “things tend to end poorly for them.” He falls silent, for another moment, eyes distant, but then says: “I don’t want you to have to be saved.” A warning. An imploring. There’s not much fear behind those words, at least not detectable, but there’s enough.

“Bond is _gone_,” Q repeats, but he doesn’t believe himself.

“Fidelity,” shrugs M, and flips his hand. “You’re not a viper like Mansfield, but, as Bond found out, even venom runs out after a lifetime. You’re dismissed, Q. Enjoy your time off. Do actually _take _time off, please. If you don’t, I’ll really have to fire you.”

The threat is empty, and Q lets him know it with a grin, but he still replies, “Of course, sir. Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here she is, the first official chapter! Hope everyone enjoyed-- big things coming soon!
> 
> \--CM


	3. Chapter Two: Days Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want to make sure no one wants to kill me,” says Q. The woman next to him gives him another glare and he makes a rude gesture back at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two, folks!! Updates should be biweekly Sundays and Thursdays if I don't get too busy and forget.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> -CM
> 
> PS: Formatting is still a little off. Apologies.

Chapter Two: Days Off

He and Eve drive to Dover. They take a convertible Q’s been modifying for 004, stating on the official record that it needed testing when really Q just needs the wind in his hair to push M’s words far, far behind him, along with the memory of piercing blue eyes. Something isn’t sitting well with him, and it’s not the fact that Bond is out, somewhere, driving a perfect piece of Q’s heart, it’s not the fact that Vauxhall is in ruins and so is the rest of the SIS and the _whole bloody country _what with goddamn Theresa May and her big bag of Brexit bullshit, it’s M’s words, tugging at him, _I don’t want you to have to be saved._

At a pub, as the evening grows later, Q asks Eve, “Do you think I’d ever need to be saved?”

She laughs. “You, Q? You’re the most competent person I’ve ever seen. Entirely competent, in fact.” There’s those words again, _entirely competent, _and they frighten him just slightly, just enough, that he signals to the bartender for another round.

Afterward, they walk through town in the light of the setting sun, and at some point, they wind up on the edge of the cliffs, just sitting, shoes off, passing a bottle of shit wine between each other and staring at the sunset over the ocean. It’s calm, somehow, and soothes Q’s aching nerves, until he says the words that have been in his mouth for days now, “Six has gone to shit.”

Eve gives him a contemplative look and trains her eyes back to the sunset. “Well, it’s nothing we can’t fix, surely.” The breeze makes her unruly curls even unrulier and he smiles at the sight of it. The words he had said aren’t the words he means, but he’s not entirely sure he’s ready to mean the words he wants to say. Eve looks as if she knows it, but doesn’t question it, instead giving him a sympathetic glance as he returns to watching the sea.

After Q drops Eve back off at her apartment the next day and returns the car safely to the basement of Q branch, he discreetly wires his phone to get quality service on the Tube and dials. It takes two rings, which is two longer than usual, before he hears: “Dear brother.”

Q smiles to himself. “Hello, Mycroft.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure? You never call these days.”

“Why shouldn’t I call my brother once in a while?”

Mycroft laughs on the other end of the phone. “Surely, Lysander, you wouldn’t just call for my stunning conversation.”

Q smiles again. “Our family was always so perceptive, weren’t we? I’m calling because your business is information.”

Mycroft scoffs. “Your business is information, brother. Don’t you have the entire world’s data files at your disposal? Besides, what Mallory doesn’t already tell you I’m sure you could just hack.”

Q frowns. “I’m in the business of information, you’re in the business of people. If you want another reason, let’s say this isn’t strictly _on the books_.”

“Is anything you do on the books? I heard about Switzerland.”

At that, Q really does laugh. A great, honking laugh that makes the woman beside him on the Tube give him a reproachful glare. “I suppose you’re right,” he says. “I’m just doing things that darling _Mallory _wouldn’t particularly appreciate, and while we both know he’s not smart enough to wonder about what I do on the computer and I’m not dumb enough to leave him footprints, he would still suspect.”

“What is it you need?”

“I want to make sure no one wants to kill me,” says Q. The woman next to him gives him another glare and he makes a rude gesture back at her.

Again, his brother laughs. Always so perceptive, the Holmes brothers. “That’s easy,” says Mycroft. “Because we’re both sure at least one person does. And it’s also not all that you want.”

“No,” Q says, his stomach rolling. “No, it’s not. I want eyes on a certain… agent.”

“And why can’t you keep an eye on him yourself?” asks Mycroft.

“I don’t want to _stalk _the man. He’s retired, anyway. I just want you to let me know if he comes back to this city.”

“You don’t think he will?” asks Mycroft.

“I don’t know what I think.”

“But you know what you want.”

“You don’t even know who I’m talking about. For all you know he could be a rogue agent that I’m worried about as a matter of national security.”

“If he was rogue you’d have told Mallory, hm? No, even in my meagre branch of government we’ve heard of 007. But you call him James, don’t you? Or you’d like to.”

“Dear brother,” says Q. “I am nothing if not professional. Just let me know if he returns to London.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to test a theory.”

“And what can you do for me? Our mother missed you at Christmas last year. And John’s called. His computer’s broken.”

Q sighs. “Baker Street’s on my way home anyway.”

“No it’s not, but thank you. And Christmas? Where _were _you last year, anyhow?”

_Babying Bond through Uganda, _Q almost says, but settles on: “Assisting an agent with a difficult mission.”

“Quite,” says Mycroft. “Well, come to Christmas this year, would you? Mum misses your baking skills.”

“Ta,” says Q and hangs up, not feeling particularly thankful at all.

He digs into the software of John’s laptop for a time and deletes a few malicious bugs that Sherlock, in all his assumed brilliance, had installed without realizing, then is persuaded to stay for tea, then dinner, then drinks, then a catnap on the couch that turns into him waking up, face smashed against John’s leg and midmorning sun burning through the windows. He grunts, rolls over, and falls off the couch.

It’s to be that kind of day.

At least John’s as hungover as he is, though Sherlock, the pure monster, is sitting at the dining table and working with some foul chemical which makes the whole flat smell like Q’s sure his breath does. “Sher,” he grunts. “What in high heaven is that?”

“Putrescine,” his brother says back, sounding distracted.

Q digs his thumbs into the corners of his eyes to try to purge every last trace of the Sandman. “Of course,” he grunts. “And breakfast?”

Sherlock scoffs. “You know I can’t cook.”

“Mm, I was the only one of us with any skill in that regard, wasn’t I? Now I recall why I never come over.”

Sherlock laughs, quietly. “You always were my favorite brother.”

Q _hmms_to himself. “Finally, something we can agree on.”

John grunts behind him, something that sounds like “French toast,” and drools on Q’s shoulder. It feels, strangely, enough, homey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) You can see exactly when I started writing this by what was going on with Brexit at the time. I decided to leave the Theresa May quip in there as a funny little time capsule. (Also, Q would totally be against Brexit!)
> 
> 2) Putrescine is a real chemical, and it was aptly named because it does, indeed, smell like dead bodies. Science!


	4. Chapter Three: Merry and Bright, Manipulative Shite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memory rises to him, unbidden, from months before. Another night, another request. Another bottle of alcohol. Fidelity, or stupidity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday, all, and happy Halloween to all who celebrate! Here is my gift to all of you :)

Chapter Three: Merry and Bright, Manipulative Shite 

Months pass. Work continues. The Nine-Eyes fallout is legendary, everything as Q expected, and he sleeps even less than he usually does making sure that none of his files were corrupted by C’s wandering eyes. Christmas comes and goes, he spends it with his family as promised. Spring stretches into summer, and he, Tanner, and Eve take three days off and a boat to southern France. Then, it’s fall again, and Q is staring down the Day of the Dead, once more. There’s been no word from Mycroft, not even a peep, and Q is almost relieved when he admits it to himself: _Bond is gone_. _It would never have been me_.

Champagne in the carport. Scotch on Guy Fawkes’ Day. The Branch, sometimes still too quiet in the early hours.

He pushes these things from his mind.

He invites Eve to Christmas, if only to make sure he’s not alone with his family, and afterward they get drunk on some spectacularly bad wine and play GTA until the early hours of Boxing Day. When she finally leaves later that night, Q’s somewhere between drunk, sober, and hungover and feeling as if his stomach is waiting until the most inconvenient possible moment to decide. His phone chimes. Sherlock.

_Late Christmas gift for you. Bring a car. _

Q curses. _What now, _he wants to say. Instead, he settles for typing back, _you know I don’t have a car. _

_Six does. Come now. I want this off my hands. _

The Tube’s closed, because even Q’s hacking skills can’t extend to making the bloody Tube start in the middle of the night, so he jogs to Vauxhall instead and takes the minutes in the cold air to shake the lingering buzz from his head. The only car in his workshop is a sad, beat-up Jag that 006 had crashed into a light pole the month prior and Q hadn’t had time to fix. _Six has a car my ass,_he thinks. _What about goddamn Uber? _Because of course his precious, favorite Aston wasn’t back from its extended vacation.

It takes him just shy of forty minutes to get to Baker Street, and he hasn’t even knocked on the door before Mrs. Hudson answers with a no-nonsense frown. “Which one of the four of you is paying for the blood on my floor?” she demands.

Q shrugs. “I’m on government salary,” he says, as an apology, and mounts the stairs. It doesn’t even occur until he’s outside Sherlock’s door that Ms. Hudson had said the words _four of you _and _blood _in the same sentence. His stomach does an unfortunate turn at the same time his heart whispers to him _fidelity_.

Lying on the couch is Bond.

John’s beside him brandishing a med kit, and there’s blood on the cushions, so much blood, too much, but all Q can see is Bond, and blue, blue, blue as his eyes meet Q’s.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks. It takes every ounce of his rapidly shredding control to school his voice into a semblance of deadly calm. In a moment, the buzz of alcohol is gone for good and he is every ounce the Quartermaster, none of the cavalier, witty Q, none of Sherlock and Mycroft’s smirking, no-nonsense Lysander.

Bond gives him a lazy cat grin, and Q quirks an eyebrow, crosses his arms. “What, no kiss?”

Q scoffs. “If you weren’t already bleeding out on my brother’s sofa I’d slap you, you insolent cock.”

Beside him, Sherlock crosses his arms also, he sees from the expression on Bond’s face that they look like twins, that the association clicks. “I didn’t know you had family, Q,” he says, voice hazy with blood loss.

Q laughs, harsh. “Refuse to answer my question again, 007, and I’ll leave you with them. Sherlock can do experiments on you.” He turns to John, holding a needle and gut with medical precision. “What’s the story?”

John shakes his head. “He broke in through a window and started rummaging through the cabinets. I thought he was a burglar, almost shot him until I recognized him. He told us he was looking for you. Well, he said he was looking for a bloke named Q and seemed very shocked when you weren’t here.”

“Wait, you know him?”

Sherlock gives him a calculating look. “I was going to ask the same of you.”

Q drums his fingers on the table, brain dashing through possibilities and conclusions and the fact that Bond is _here, here, here. _Finally he settles on the simplest truth, and the one that says the least: “He was an agent of mine.”

“Is, present tense!” rasps Bond from the couch.

Q waves a hand at him. “Shut up or I’ll shoot you again. And I won’t miss like the last idiot.” He turns back to John. “Has he been stitched?”

John nods. “Good,” says Q. “I’ll take it from here. I’ll be back tomorrow to explain this mess to you, I promise. For now, I have more pressing matters to deal with, like taking this idiot somewhere and screaming at him about protocol.” Sherlock nods, and Q takes that as answer enough, so he goes to the couch and blinks at Bond, making sure the malcontent leeching from him is clearly visible. “You’re coming with me.”

Bond gives him another lazy grin, one with more sex to it, more predatory intent. Q ignores what it does to him. “Taking me home, Quartermaster?” he asks, sultry. “Am I to spend the night in your bed?” _You bloody fuck, _Q thinks. Memory rises to him, unbidden, of months before. Another night, another request. Another bottle of alcohol. Fidelity, or stupidity.

And just like that, before Q can stop it, anger’s rising to the surface in a heady rush, taking away any of lingering alcohol haze clouding his better judgment. When he speaks, it is cold, cold, cold. “I am your superior, _Bond, _lest you forget, so never try something like this again. When you’re sober and have more fucking blood inside you than what John can provide, you’re coming back here and apologizing, _after _you explain to me how you found a goddamn house not on any of the SIS records.” He extends a hand and when Bond takes it and practically yanks him up off the couch, ignoring Bond’s grunt of pain. “Car’s outside.”

He turns back to Sherlock. “Thank you,” he says. Sherlock nods, and Q knows he’s reading the unspoken words: _for right now I’m Q, not little Lys, please don’t tell him_, and there’s a hint of a smile on his big brother’s face as he inclines his head as if to say _Quartermaster_.

Q shoves Bond into the car, ignoring the larger man’s protests and Mrs. Hudson behind him griping on and on about the blood and screeches away, shooting around corner after corner with little grace and too much cold rage. Bond mumbles against the seatbelt and Q says: “Hold on, you bloody idiot, you’ve been stitched. Don’t go dying on me now.”

“Why, Q,” smirks Bond, “It almost seems like you care.”

“You’re an investment, you bastard,” says Q. “If you die on my watch the government will surely take away my pension.”

“You could have at least brought a better car,” rasps Bond. “This is a piece of shit.”

“If you’d brought me back the goddamned Aston, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. _My _goddamned Aston, may I remind you, which I loaned it to you _not indefinitely_ and for the sole purpose of getting M out of the city. But surely you don’t remember that.”

Bond rumbles dissent. “You didn’t have to give it to me after. When I came by the lab.”

“You would have stolen it were I not there. And besides, you’re a manipulative cock and you know it.”

Bond, for his credit, falls silent after that.

When they arrive back at Q’s, it takes all of his (wiry but still formidable) strength to get Bond out of the car and upstairs. _God, Bond is heavy_, Q thinks, as he’s dragging the sodding man through his living room. Once they’re inside and Bond is settled on Q’s spare bed, Q runs his fingers over the stitch job on Bond’s left pectoral. Efficient, as he’d expected from an army doctor. Really, Sherlock chose well. “What on Earth are you on?” he asks Bond. “And no, this isn’t judgement. This is me wondering if I should refuse you access to my certainly not illicit stash of Vicodin when you come whining to me in the middle of the night. He doesn’t make an effort to keep the disdain from his voice, and it works, because Bond frowns as he says “Scotch, and blood loss, and something I think was Rohypnol.”

Q clucks his tongue. “Jesus, Bond, how did you lose control enough to be Roofied?

Bond just sighs. “Lack of judgment, evidently.” He looks tiredly around the room. “Nice place.”

“You’re in no position to mock me, you ass,” says Q, and he means it.

“I’m being serious,” says Bond.

“Fuck off,” says Q. “Just shut your eyes and we can have a meaningful conversation when you’re sober.”

Bond sighs, obviously in pain, and obligingly lies back down on the bed, clumsily pulling his ragged shoes off one at a time. Q pulls the blanket over him, almost missing Bond’s soft _I’m sorry. _

Q scoffs. “Now I know you’re not well in the head. Did Watson check you for concussion?”

Bond frowns at him, and Q’s sure it’s supposed to be menacing, but it’s really just laughable. “I don’t get concussed, _Q_.”

“The insolence in your tone is amusing, _Bond, _it’s as if you’re the one with control in this sad situation. Get some rest. I’ll figure out what to do with you by morning.”

Q’s halfway out of the room when Bond says quietly: “I finished the mission.”

Q doesn’t turn. “How so?”

“The bitch is dead.” His voice is cold, professional, detached, but Q knows Bond well enough to know the farce. It echoes Vesper, he realizes, remembering M-the-former’s crisp handwriting, redacted, in a file he wasn’t supposed to read. At that, he does turn, halfway, just enough to see Bond. His face is carefully blank, his arm is cradling the newly-stitched wound, but Q still knows. “Loving doesn’t seem to go well for you, does it?” he asks. Careful. Gentle. A probe.

Bond meets his eyes, that blue-blue stained with barely visible watercolor sadness. “No, he says. “No, it does not. Good night, Q.”

Bond sleeps through the weekend. Q checks on him a few times, switches out the full glasses of water on the bedstand, barely lingers long enough to check for pulse. But on Sunday night his color’s improved a fair bit and his breathing looks easier, so Q counts it as a win.

He goes back to MI6 on Monday morning as if it’s a normal goddamn day. He feels slightly like Bond himself, coming down the car-lift with the beat-up Jag and probably scaring the few minions on graveyard shift. It’s relieving to see his bench, as horrid as he’d left it before Christmas, before brothers and gunshots and Bond. He does three times the amount of work he normally does just to chase a sense of normalcy.

Tanner comes in just past noon, Eve in tow, and he’s brought takeaway, bless his heart. Q grins brightly and sets down the gun he’s been modifying. “Lord,” he says, grinning. “Did we move weekly gossip lunch hour and I wasn’t aware? Or did I just work through two days without realizing?”

Eve just smiles in the way that means either murder or a great deal of fun, and in this case he certainly, certainly hopes it’s the latter. “Special edition,” she says, “because Bond’s back.”

The takeaway includes a bottle of wine. It probably isn’t regulation, but the one man who might care is in an emergency meeting with the agent in question all afternoon, and if MI6 is about to be thrown in as big a shitstorm as he thinks it’ll be, they’re going to need it.

When he goes home that night, he finds that his home is impeccable again. The spare bed is made, the full glasses of water on the bedstand are drying in the dishrack, and there’s no sign of Bond besides a bottle of _very _expensive brandy and a note saying _I was never here _in impeccable, brutish handwriting.

He pours it down the sink, ignoring the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. 

Sherlock answers the door with an eyebrow raised. “Two visits in two days, hm? Love, it appears, makes all Holmes brothers act in mysterious ways.”

Q scoffs at him. “This isn’t love, Sher. This is _me_, coming here to talk to _you._Because I promised. Because if 007 decides to make himself a presence in your life by breaking into your home, you deserve to know few of the things I do as Q.”

“Come on, Lys, you know I know you better than that.”

Q slips past Sherlock into the kitchen, moving some suspiciously bubbling Erlenmeyer flasks to make a cup of tea. When John comes in, Q pours him a cup. “How do you know him?”

John laughs, settling back against the counter. He takes a sip. “Did Sherlock ever tell you I was in the Army?”

Q giggles. “What, you mean when he was texting me and practically freaking out over you?”

John looks confused. “When did he do that?”

Q gives a sympathetic smile. “Well, he doesn’t do that thing that teenage girls do, if that’s what you mean. His texts were more than three words, and one even included a smiley face. It was insane, it’s what it was.”

John cackles. “I suppose so. Anyway, when I was in the Army, almost five years ago now, I was shot. You know that story, the whole _false wound _and _betraying wife _and _secretly being in love with my flatmate _type deal. My whole point is that Bond, your Bond, or 007 or whoever the hell he is—he saved me. My wound—at least, when it _wasn’t _psychosomatic, was bleeding, and it was bleeding enough that I was dying. Bond was my commander. I suppose he was undercover, or something, but he stitched me up. It wasn’t clean, and it wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. He carried me himself to the extraction site and waited until the helicopter came to collect me and take me home to England. In a way, Bond’s the only reason I’m here.”

Q laughs despite himself. “We should have invited Seven to your wedding then, ta?”

John gives him a knowing smile. “Let’s just hope Sherlock and I get invited to yours.”

Q smacks him. “Please. Just because you’re my brother-in-law doesn’t mean you get to make fun of me like that. I remember that mission, though. He was undercover investigating the British army commander as a joint effort with MI5. That was when I was R, for the old Q. I remember the chaos in the office when Bond came back onto CCTV dragging an unconscious man. We thought he was trying to kill you, it turned out he was just trying to save you.”

John giggles a little, in a hysterical sort of way. “So my life was saved by the finest and most well-known killer in modern British history. What are my chances?”


	5. Chapter Four: Fucking Professional

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In his mind, it is the days before Mexico City again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy November, everyone! Enjoy this little escapade. I promised you Bond would show up eventually, and here he is! The plot really starts rolling after this.

Chapter Four: Fucking Professional

A day after Sherlock and John and coming home far too late with far too much_ brotherly affection _in his bloodstream, he’s drinking tea in his office and nursing the remnants of a mild hangover when a familiar rumbling fills the Q-cave and the carport lift opens to reveal Bond, pretty-as-you-fucking-please, lazily twirling the keys to the Aston in his fingers. Q can’t contain his shock, and he blames it on the last dregs of hangover as he watches Bond’s eyes dart to his slack jaw with mild amusement. “And you thought so little of me,” says Bond, light. 

“How was your retirement?” snipes back Q, fully aware of the effect it will cause, and feeling a touch of sadistic glee as he sees some of the amusement gutter in Bond’s eyes. “Short-lived,” he says. Curt. Professional.

“Quite,” agrees Q. Curt. Professional. “Keys, please. In my office.”

Now the minions have the gall to look shocked, because Q _never _uses his office. He can see a few of them beginning to whisper among themselves, and he shoots them a scathing glare before ushering Bond into his office and shutting the door. Bond raises an eyebrow, sultry, but Q cuts him off before he was about to say whatever dirty thing had just entered his head by crossing his arms. “Explain,” he says.

Bond cocks the other eyebrow and Q ignores the wrinkles it creates on his forehead. “What is there to explain?” he asks, innocent as a new-born lamb. Q hates it.

“Explain why you broke into my brother’s house. Why you went to my brother’s house instead of mine. How you even found out it existed. _Why _on _Earth _you came back. You were finished, Bond! Even cleaner than after Eve shot you. What more could you want? You had the girl, you had the car, you could have had a peaceful life. There was no _job _to be finished, you knew that.”

“I trust you,” says Bond. He sets the keys gently on the corner of Q’s cluttered desk. “That’s why I came to yours. Or tried to.”

Q pushes some books onto the floor and settles onto his chair, hoping his face doesn’t betray any of the shock, the _anger _running through his blood. In his head, Mallory hisses _fidelity._“How did she die?” he asks, when he finds his voice.

Bond’s voice is unaffected, but it is either a mark of how badly he’s doing, or how well Q knows him, that Q recognizes it immediately as bravado. “I killed her. She would have betrayed us all anyway. She was lying the whole time, to me, to her father, to everyone. She was going to be the new Blofeld. So, you’re wrong. There was a job to be finished. I reported back in afterward, like protocol.”

Q wants to gripe _you hate protocol, _but knows it’ll make Bond feel as if he’s won something, so he settles for a neutral question: “How long ago?”

Bond presses a gentle hand to his chest, where Q knows the still-healing gunshot wound is. “Four hours before you saw me. Thirty minutes after she poured me a Macallan laced with every uni girl’s least favorite date-rape drug. Ten minutes after her new lover, one of Spectre’s higher-ups, shot me. Luckily for me, he missed. Unluckily for him, I didn’t.”

Q gives him a half-smile. “How are the stitches?” he asks.

“Healing,” replies Bond. “Tell that man I say thank you.”

“You can tell John yourself, when you deliver the new couch that you’re buying them. Since you ruined the last one, after all. But from what I hear, it’s a life-debt paid, so I doubt there should be any sweat off your back about it.”

Bond adjusts his shirt, looking far too elegant and out of place in Q’s tattered office. “Well, Q, if that’s all, I’ll be on my way.” He turns on his ankle without another word, and Q almost lets him go until he thinks for another instant.

“You were in London,” he realizes. “To have come to me so quickly.”

Bond doesn’t turn. “Yes.” His voice is clipped with annoyance, as if Q is holding him up.

At that, Q’s heart shatters. In his mind, it is the days before Mexico City again. _What would you say? _asks the memory of Bond, voice kitten-soft, _if I told you I wanted to stay in this office forever?_

So much for fidelity.

“Get out,” Q says, but even as the words come out of his mouth he amends them: “Wait.”

Now Bond really does look annoyed. “Make up your mind,” he snaps.

The pure indignity of what he’s just realized drowns out the memory, and he’s glad to push it aside and turn his voice to chilly calm again. “That house wasn’t on any of the Six records. How did you find it?”

Bond shrugs, insolence written all over it. “I got it off your file.”

Q’s voice is whip-sharp. “A file which doesn’t exist.”

“It exists on M’s computer. M-the-former, that is. I read it the day after we met in the National Gallery.”

“You’re a very talented liar, Bond, but I’m better. I change my files yearly, and all of them list addresses that don’t exist, all on back streets in Hammersmith. In addition, I remember that particular file. I listed myself as having a sister who had died of malaria when she was working abroad. Where did you get that address?”

Now Bond turns, but instead of the insolent, cunning cat-smile that Q was expecting, there’s worry, just a hint of it—but it’s enough. “I hacked into the Six database a week ago, in case I needed somewhere to stay after, somewhere safe to go. You had three addresses listed. One, at Baker Street. One, just out of the city in Waltham Forest, and one in Lambeth, about three tube stops from the lab. I assumed the Baker Street one was yours, as the neighborhood was cheaper than in Lambeth.”

Q’s heart goes very, very still. “Show me this file, and show it to me _now._”

Bond holds out a hand for Q’s laptop and he obliges. Then, Bond logs into the SIS secure database using M-the-former’s _password_, gods above, why hadn’t someone _deactivated that_and navigates through a few sublevels of folders that only Mallory has access to until he gets to one labeled _classified employee dossiers_. There’s one titled Q. Bond clicks it.

The document is blank, except for five words. _Welcome to the real world, “Q”._

Bond’s face is sheet-white. “We have a mole.”

There’s a file for Eve, for Tanner, for all the senior operatives, but all of them are blank except for the same five words. Q turns towards Bond. “What _have _you done?”

Bond throws his arms up. “Well, it’s not my fault, is it?” His voice is teetering towards anger, the kind that tends to end with a messy burial, so Q tries a different tactic, asking: “How much did you see? What was on that file?”

“Everything,” says Bond, and _oh, god, _the anger’s still there, and rising until it cracks his voice into a line of ice. “Four addresses, your full name, the names of all your brothers and your parents, your family history, your tendency for manic depression, your time in prison, really, Lysander, what’s that all about? You play the goody two-shoes _so well.”_

Q slaps him before he can think better of it. “Get out of my sight,” he says, voice low. Bond does nothing but press a hand to his reddening cheek, having the _gall, _the utter _attitude _to look shocked. “That deserves an apology, I think,” he says to Q, voice dripping with reproach.

The closest thing within Q’s reach is a book, a big, heavy one, and he throws it with all his force at Bond. The agent, for his credit, ducks just before the book hits the wall and scrambles into the lab. Q stands from his desk just as he hears something smash. He dashes out into the lab to see his minions, shocked, at their desks, and Bond, who is staring, smug and satisfied, at a row of Q’s mugs in pieces on the ground.

The roaring in Q’s head goes dangerously quiet. “Get the fuck out of my lab before I test one of these prototypes on you.” He surges forward and grabs Bond by the collar. The agent snarls at him, grabbing a fistful of his hair in a death-lock, but Q holds on tight, gritting his teeth against the pain. “And if you ever, _ever_, come to my brothers’ homes again, _or mine, _I’ll have you killed.”

“Where is your authority?” snaps Bond, voice a predatory snarl. “I could kill you, right bloody now.”

“I am your rutting _superior_,” spits Q. “Don’t give me any of your _I answer to M alone bullshit _because I won’t take it. If M dies, do you know who takes command of this bloody mess of a ship? Eve, and then Tanner, and then me. _Not you. _Never you.You are a gun in the hands of better men, _007,_and I know you think the entire world exists to be your playground, but _not here_. Not in this office. In this office, you are _my fucking agent. _You follow my rules. You sit when I tell you to sit, you stand when I tell you to stand, you take the equipment _I _give you and don’t sneak in to steal things that don’t belong to you. You bring it back _without _outstanding damages. You don’t manipulate your superior into giving you a fucking car, you don’t break the property of your superior because you’re pouting and you don’t threaten to kill your superior, _or _his family who you only know exist _because you had back-door access_. For that alone I could have you fired, right _fucking _now. You are good at your job, yes, but you are one of _ten _people who are just as good as you and there are many, _many _worthy competitors who would love to take your place_._I have the authority to fire you, to hire you, and to tell you to _get the fuck out _of my bloody office. So _go_.”

Bond drops the hand from his hair, twisting it at his side. “Get your dirty hands off of me, _Lysander_.”

Q does, and steps back one solitary footlength. He straightens his cardigan, smooths his hair, and turns back to Bond. “To you, it’s Q. It will _always _be Q. Call me Lysander again and I’ll castrate you myself.”

Bond blinks at him, once, twice, a dare, a challenge that Q does not rise to, before buttoning up his suit jacket and stalking from the lab. The minions look shell-shocked and Q sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. He feels cold. Empty. “Clean up this fucking mess,” he says, but there’s nothing but exhaustion in it. “And get me M. Right bloody now.”

Fifteen minutes later, when M storms in, practically being dragged by one of the minions, Q’s digging in the MI6 secure server from his computer, deciding how much he wants to tell R, and how on Earth he’s going to broach this to his brothers. “What the fresh hell is this, Q?” demands M. “I’m late for a meeting with the bloody PM and on my way here, I pass Bond leaving and looking for all the world like he’s just had his heart ripped out by a spurned lover. Explain.”

While the second part of Mallory’s statement makes Q want to crawl into a great lumping hole and stay there for eternity, he forces himself into a façade of calm, taking a sip of his tea (in a less-than-par Styrofoam mug, because rutting Bond _broke _all of his. “We have a mole, sir.”

It takes another twenty minutes to explain everything, to let M know in private just how much information’s been leaked, five minutes for M to realize _his own _covert data has also gotten out, two minutes for M to pace in his office, death in his eyes, ten seconds on the internet to find that _thankfully, no tabloids have gotten to it yet, _and another hour for the both of them to figure out a plan to get all of their families out and away and safe. “I have a country estate,” says M. “So secret that it’s not on any of the records, because there’s no legal deeds tying it to me. Call your brothers and tell them to come to Vauxhall. Tell Eve to get her fiancé out. Are your parents in danger?”

“Out of the country,” says Q, “But they don’t even have mobile phones or social media, so I think they’ll be fine.”

“Good,” says Mallory. “Here’s the address. Once your brothers are here you’re to take a car. I don’t care which one of yours it is as long as it’s bulletproof. You are to meet me at this house at 20 hundred hours this evening. Tell Eve the same. How many of the 00s are in the country?”

“Just Bond, sir,” says Q, gritting his teeth even as he says it. 

M gives him a look that says he knows all. “Can the two of you be professional and civil to one another?”

“Professional, yes,” says Q. “Always professional. Fucking professional. Whether we can be civil is another question that I don’t feel up to answering right now.”

“We’ll have to make do with it,” says Mallory, matter-of-factly, “because until we know who leaked this, why, and what they plan to do with it, we need someone with a license to kill to keep us safe. The last two times I trusted Vauxhall’s security to guard us, the building was bloody well blown up, so you’ll forgive me if I trust one man with a gun far more than a computer or a modern building for the time being.”

It echoes the National Gallery, thinks Q abstractedly, when Bond mocked him for being the way he was and Q quipped back something clever about tea and computers and his own sheer brilliance. Back before he had abandoned being Lys, being R. In fact, the first time Bond called him Q, with what little grudging respect he could dredge up, was the first time Q had called himself Q. _Brave new world, _Q had heard Bond remark to himself, after he had left, not knowing how right he’d been.

“With all due respect, sir,” says Q, yanking on the reins of his reverie and snapping back into the present. “How do we know it wasn’t Bond?”

Mallory laughs, bitterly. “If Bond wanted to kill you he’d have shot you in front of that ugly painting all those years ago. He’s loyal, like a bloody dog, but he’s loyal to people, not titles. He’s not blindly loyal to me because I’m M, he was loyal to Mansfield because of her sheer will and he’s loyal to me because of my intolerance to bullshit, because I’ve earned it. He’s loyal to you too, Q, or else he’d never have told you.”

“Sir,” says Q. “This is going to sound like I’m disrespecting you and I’m not, but that’s complete horseshit. Bond’s never been loyal to _me. _Bond hates me, for Christ’s sake.”

M cocks an eyebrow. “Oh? Is that why he came limping into your brother’s home the other night, looking for you? Sometimes I fear he’s more loyal to you than me, and you’re more loyal to him than me, and it scares me because if the two of you work together you’ll be more unstoppable than anything Britain’s ever seen. And then sometimes it scares me not at all, because I know you’ll be the most competent service members Britain’s ever seen, too.”

Before Q can process all of that, Mallory stands, abruptly. “First order of business is to get your brothers and Eve to my country house. I’ll take care of Tanner. Second order of business is apologizing to Bond, because I know it’s not really your fault, we both know it, but it’ll appeal to his disgustingly arrogant conscience enough that maybe he’ll start helping us. Third order of business is to help me finish the scotch in my cellar, because if we’re dealing with a national security issue I’m going to need something fortifying.”

Q stands, shakes Mallory’s hand. “Yes, sir,” he says.

M looks back at him. “Don’t let me down.”


	6. Chapter Five: Defensible Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s Skyfall over again,” says Q, before he can stop himself.
> 
> “Except we’re not sure anyone is coming,” puts in Bond, pointedly, “and let’s hope this one doesn’t also end with one of MI6’s senior staff dead by my hands.”
> 
> Q falls silent after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy almost weekend! Let's celebrate with another adventure into Lazarus-land! Bit of a shorter chapter for you all today, but I think Sunday's chapter should make up for it. We're nearing the close of Part 1, everyone! Hope you're all enjoying it so far! 
> 
> As always, criticism, comments, or inane ranting are welcomed and can be left below. 
> 
> See you soon!
> 
> -C

Chapter Five: Defensible Space

It takes a surprisingly small amount of time to get on the road. By _surprisingly small, _Q means that it takes three hours. After all, “the Holmes brothers, two cats, and John Watson go on a road trip_…”_sounds like the beginning of a suspicious pub joke. In the end, they’re in a 4-Runner that was hastily repurposed from a future mission for 005, and it’s packed to the brim with what seems like seven men’s wardrobes, half of a chemistry lab for Sherlock, Q’s cats, and about ten computers and various weapons from the considerable arsenal left after the explosion at Vauxhall.

M’s country estate is north of London by an hour. They make good time, all things considering, and are pulling up outside just before 18:30. It’s a disgustingly massive house, even bigger than Skyfall (though Q had only seen the fiery remnants of it as he was directing Six teams around it in the very recent wake of M’s death.)

There appear to be about seven garages in an unattached building, and Q pulls the 4-Runner into one of them as Mallory appears from the large manor house to greet them. Together, they haul most of the essentials inside, Q giving a grin to Eve as she insists on taking the heaviest of his boxes. Once everything’s finally inside, Mallory turns to them. “Q and company, welcome. You,” he says, pointing to Mycroft. “I did not expect to be related to my Quartermaster.”

Mycroft gives him a conspiratorial smile. “What can I say, Gareth? I associate myself with only the best.”

Mallory grins back, and Q realizes only too late what a frightening pair they make. Then he turns back to Q. “Rooms are on the second, third, and fourth floors. Pick whichever you want, you’ll know if they’re occupied. Once you’re done, I need you back down here, Q, so you can rig security.”

Q chooses a room on the top floor, a half-hidden bedroom tucked into the corner of the house with a brilliant and useful view of the drive and the copse of trees beyond. He lets his grateful cats out of their kennels and scans the room, setting his bag down on the bed. The rich are absurd to him, really, because he chose one of the smallest rooms and _still _the bed seems bigger than half his apartment back home in Lambeth.

A quiet knock on the door drags him from his scrutiny. “Come in,” he says, and the door opens to admit Bond.

James, as if knowing his place, lingers on the threshold, only seeming surprised when one of Q’s cats (Huxle_y, that traitorous bastard) _winds around his feet, purring loudly. “What do you want, 007?” asks Q, and is happily impressed with how well he’s schooled his voice into professionalism.

Bond blinks, staring somehow both at him and past him with those blue eyes. “M wants us downstairs to discuss security.”

A rude quip jumps to his mind, but Q dismisses it. “Very well,” he says. “No use keeping Mallory waiting.”

He slips past Bond, who looks as if he wants to say more but is refraining. Good man. Unfortunately, it means he’s forced to suffer being awkwardly followed by Bond as he gets lost on the way to the stairs and finally makes his way to the servant’s kitchen, as if he needs a bodyguard.

M and Eve are already instilled around a small wooden table, Eve with a cup of tea and Mallory with a glass of scotch. He accepts both their offers of drinks and downs the scotch Mallory pours for him in one long burn (if only to impress the agent lurking behind him) and takes the cup of tea from Eve, twining his fingers loosely around it and seating himself at the table.

“Shall we get started?” Mallory asks.

* * *

In two hours, they’ve established a secure line of communication that no one should be able to access, devised strategies for making homemade explosives if necessary, and created a secure perimeter with booby traps and security systems in place. Q has invented an entirely new type of WiFi hotspot accessible only to his computers, Bond has taken stock of all their ammunition, Eve has spoken to the PM. Oh, and they've made frozen pizza.

“We’ll stay here for a week,” says M. “This will give whoever it is—if it is a mole—time to determine their movements and hopefully make them more known to us. If someone does move on us, we’ll know it’s internal, as these plans were only spoken of verbally and in secure locations. If no one comes, we can assume that either there was no mole on the inside or that said mole wasn’t clever enough to hear of our actions. For _that _situation, Q will be sending out false data trails around the world in order to distract our new friends and hopefully lead them on a goose chase. Either way, we’ll know more about them then they will us.

“At the end of the week, we’ll take what we know and either return to MI6, placing your families in secure locations, or we’ll stay here, fortify further, and continue searching. In addition, we continue doing our jobs as if we _were _at Six. The four of us work remotely enough as it is, and I’ve had Q send covert word that I had an emergency engagement in Cairo. This will allow me to attend meetings remotely and arouse no suspicion.”

“It’s Skyfall over again,” says Q, before he can stop himself.

“Except we’re not sure anyone is coming,” puts in Bond, pointedly, “and let’s hope this one doesn’t also end with one of MI6’s senior staff dead by my hands.”

Q falls silent after that.


	7. Chapter Six: A Sharp Pull to a Simpler Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fire crackles in the corner, burning low, and it mirrors the simmering, calm heat in Bond’s blue eyes. Slow, and alcohol-soaked, it makes the world go muzzy around the edges. Familiar like a memory he wishes he didn't have. Don't do this, part of him whispers. Don't do this again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus chapter, y'all! Well, not really bonus. I'm going to be spending next Thursday on a plane, so I'll be posting Thursday's chapter on Sunday. Didn't want to leave you all hanging, and I really like this chapter, so it's going up today! Hope you enjoy!
> 
> -C

Chapter Six: A Sharp Pull to a Simpler Time 

The evening mood is tense, tense enough that Q ends up sitting in a quiet, out of the way living room just to get away from Mycroft and Sherlock’s banter, Eve’s reassurances to her fiancé, and Bond’s sullen silences and pointed glares towards Q. With nothing else to do, he gets on a computer and does some remote work for Six, tying up the loose ends of security, sending out an anonymous thread to the Q minions and telling them to carry on as usual in his absence, and sending tracers through all of his security, trying to pinpoint when exactly the breach occurred. Before he knows it, the clock on the wall is chiming midnight. He looks up, blinking as his eyes adjust to the dim of the room. It’s only a moment later when he recognizes Bond, sitting in the chair across from him.

“You have terrible survival instincts, Quartermaster,” quips Bond. A half smile quirks across his features.

“How long have you been there?” he asks.

“A while,” says Bond. “Drink?”

When Q hesitates, Bond pours one anyway, and sets it on the table in front of Q. “It’s not as if I’m going to seduce you, Q,” he rumbles, displeased.

It hits Q like a ton of bricks, and he abruptly blinks against the smarting in his eyes. The thoughts that he’d been steadfastly ignoring since Bond’s return hum in the back of his mind like a din he can’t ignore. The sad part was, he had been a breath away from stupidity, from asking the _why _he’d wanted to for over a year when he’d seen the smile flit across Bond’s face almost as if the man wasn’t aware of it. But everything he was going to say, all the childish _hope _of it withers in his mouth with Bond’s words and leaves nothing but an aftertaste of anger behind.

He says nothing, not trusting his words, and just reaches for the glass. Deliberately meeting Bond’s eyes, he drains the wine in one swallow and stands to leave. “Thank you for the drink.”

Bond surges forward, grabbing Q’s wrist in a vice-grip. “Why are you leaving?” 

_ Don’t take the words from my mind, Bond_, he almost snaps. But it’s been an exhausting day, and if they fought Q knows he would lose. “I want some air,” he says. It’s not a lie. “I was going to go for a walk.”

Bond raises an eyebrow. “Do you want company?”

It takes all of Q’s efforts to keep his face straight, to keep his voice stilled into careful neutrality. It is as if at any moment, his anger could leach through like rotting juices from an old bin bag. “No, thank you,” he says, “But I appreciate it.”

"Is it because I called you Lysander earlier?” asks Bond, in a complete conversational left turn. “I truly didn’t mean to offend you.”

The speed of their conversational change is giving Q whiplash. For a moment, he wonders if Bond truly doesn’t know why he’s offended, but the man is smarter than he lets on, even if he is a massive prick. He thinks, absurdly, that the abrupt subject change is Bond’s own way of extending a metaphorical olive branch. “It’s not the name I don’t like,” he sighs, ashamed of himself for grabbing hold of it. “It’s the connotation of it.”

Bond grins, and just like that the subtext and history are gone. Q could cry in relief. “But why not? I rather like the idea of you as a Shakespearian hero, cavorting around forests and falling in love with beautiful ladies. Or men. That play was rather ambiguous, wasn’t it?”

Q cringes. “That’s rather the problem, isn’t it? I hate that play for what it represents—the helplessness. I don’t want to be taken advantage of by some magical faerie woman.”

A great hearty laugh emanates from Bond then, so jubilant that Q’s laughing as well, and they giggle together helplessly for a few minutes. Bond pours them both another drink and Q thumbs it, taking a more careful sip this time. “If you want to call me something other than Q,” he says, ignoring his brain telling him _stupid, stupid, stupid, _“Call me Quinlan.”

Bond looks up at him, inquisitive, and that look alone makes it worthwhile. “It’s my middle name,” he says, “and I always felt as if it suited me better.”

Bond seems to consider this for a moment, taking a small drink of his scotch. “And yet,” he says. “You’re somebody like M. Where the letter isn’t a designation.”

“No,” Q agrees, “No it’s not.” He thinks, for another moment, remembering Mallory’s words from that morning, so long ago now. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Bond crosses his legs, absently running his fingers over a loose hem on his slacks. “What for?”

“This whole mess wasn’t your fault,” says Q, and he means it. “You just happened to be directly in the middle of a firestorm of mine.” It’s not a lie, but the fact that the firestorm itself is sort of Bond’s fault doesn’t bare mentioning.

A muscle in Bond’s beautiful jaw feathers, and Bond blinks once, twice. He drains his scotch. “I found a tape,” he says, after a long moment. “At L’Americain, just over a year ago.” He pours another drink, and if only to spare Bond from drinking the rest of the bottle on his own, Q drains his wine and sloshes the rest of the scotch into his own glass. “I’m assuming you know of Vesper Lynd?”

Q gives Bond the ghost of a smile. “You’re not the only one who reads files you’re not supposed to.”

Bond gives him an answering nod, then settles back into the chair. His eyes are faraway, back years before. “I was young,” he says. “But not inexperienced. And she still died.”

Q’s not quite sure what to say, but before he can, Bond continues. “Then, there was M. I was older then, seven goddamn years older, and had a lot more life behind me, a lot more _power_. And she still died.”

“And Madeline,” says Q, quietly.

“Oh, _fuck _Madeline!” shouts Bond, and he’s on his feet and he’s hurling the glass of scotch at the wall. It shatters, spraying sharp edges everywhere. Q gets up, slowly, and pads across the room to Bond before he realizes what he’s doing. Bond’s stance is nothing short of predatory. His shoulders are heaving, his hands are clenching and unclenching at his sides, and when he looks back at Q his eyes are unhinged, glazed, but red. So very, humanely, red. “Fuck Madeline,” he repeats, but it’s smaller now, tinged with alcohol and regret and keening, longing _need_, just as something within Q is whispering _human, human, human_.

It appears that even James Bond can cry.

He’ll probably live to regret it, but Q takes Bond’s hand without asking and sinks to the ground, pulling the agent down with him until they’re both sitting on Mallory’s wooden floor, backs pressed to the sofa. A droplet of Macallan slides down the mahogany across from them. Q watches it. “The tape was from her interrogation,” Bond says, after a long moment, “when I was tortured by Le Chiffre--I’m assuming you read that, too. She made a deal to spare me in exchange for the money. That tape was why I got out of there alive, and why she didn’t.” His voice is ragged, raw. There are years of things here Q does not know, cannot know.

It is only after a long minute that Q realizes that this truth, this confession, is Bond’s version of an apology. And truth can only be matched with truth.

“When I was sixteen,” says Q, “I hacked into the SIS. It’s how I was put on M’s radar, actually, Mansfield’s, that is. She was impressed, for about five minutes. I hacked into some files. Nothing major, I thought, until I realized that I’d caused such a massive breach in security that I’d allowed someone to piggyback my signal, get into MI6 on their own, and find out confidential information. That information was used to take three 00 agents out of deep cover and assassinate them in the coming weeks.

“Of course, M found out, and sent me to prison. One of the highest grade in the country, actually. Ten years later, when I turned twenty-six, she paid my bond, released me, and named me R. She told me that if I could figure out how to hack into the most secure network in the country, then I could damn well make sure anybody else didn’t do the same.” He laughs, despite himself. “I held the position for only three months. Then Silva returned, you returned, and… well, you know the story after that.”

Bond glances at him sideways. “I suppose we’re both Lazarus, then. Why, then, are such creatures as us, with the blood of entire nations on our hands, allowed to be reborn?”

Q takes another swig of the scotch, enjoying the pleasant burn of it in his stomach, in his head. A phoenix’s fire. Rebirth. This entire conversation is a rebirth, a sharp pull to a simpler time and the many long nights twin to this that live in Q’s memory from before Mexico City. While Q normally hates reminding of it, tonight he’s glad of it. He’s glad they’re not fighting. He’s glad Bond’s eyes are cool, and far away, and not predator-focused on him. “Perhaps because the world isn’t done with us yet,” he says. “Perhaps because we still have some good to do.”

Bond laughs, a cynical, pitiful thing. “Everything, every good thing I try to do, every _person _I try to save just ends up dying. Don’t go dying on me, Q.”

“Are you trying to save me, James?” Soft. Quiet. The fire crackles in the corner, burning low, and it mirrors the simmering, calm heat in Bond’s blue eyes. Slow, and alcohol-soaked, it makes the world go muzzy around the edges. Familiar like a memory he wishes he didn't have. _Don't do this, _part of him whispers. _Don't do this again. _

“Define salvation,” sighs Bond. He takes the glass from Q’s hands and drains it, grimacing. “Because somehow, I always cock it up.”

The End of Part One


	8. Part Two: Honesty. Chapter Seven: Qualifications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond gives him a wolf’s smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy chapter day, folks! If you're just tuning in now, don't forget I also posted a chapter on Friday, so go check that one out. No updates until next Sunday, sorry-- I'll be spending all of Thursday on a plane, so it will be a bit of a stretch. Hopefully Friday's and today's chapter make up for it. Enjoy!

Part Two: Honesty

Chapter Seven: Qualifications

Q doesn’t know when he falls asleep until it’s morning and it’s bright and his head feels nasty. It’s not unlike a morning so many mornings ago, when he’d been laughing with Sherlock and John over breakfast as he tried to clear his head. _Define salvation, _Bond had said, and maybe a year before, Q would have said _it feels something like this. _That’s the curious thing about the Holmes brothers. They do not love easily, but they love each other more than all the stars in the sky, and if anyone else wins their love, the universe itself will be moved by the force of it. They are fierce creatures, and, in their own ways they are loyal to a fault. It is, perhaps, why their name sounds so much like _home, _for the three without always long for one, quips, petty angers, and mind palaces aside. A semblance of it can always be found in each other, but there is always an outside longing. This is perhaps why Q was so relieved when Sherlock met John, and why waking up on a couch, hungover, felt so familiar.

Something in his bones tugs _home_, just as it has for so long. He detests it, quietly, just as he always has.

_What would you say_, asks his memory, _if I told you I wanted to stay here forever_?

He pushes the thought away.

Something shifts beneath him and suddenly the floor is careening towards him at a dizzying rate. “Dear lord,” a familiar voice says behind him, gravelly and morning-quiet. “If I had known my bony shoulder was the one thing keeping you grounded to this good earth I’d never have moved.”

Q turns to see Bond hovering above him, looking far too good for someone who’s also, ostensibly, just had an extended nap on a wooden floor. “Your liver is inhuman and I hate it,” he whines, covering his eyes.

Bond laughs. “How am I ever supposed to earn back your trust, mighty Q?” he quips.

Q drags himself up to a sitting position, blinking uncomprehendingly at the wall. “Get me an ibuprofen and a cup of tea and I’ll consider.”

Bond offers him a hand, and Q takes it, rising to his feet slowly, slowly. “Better yet, Quartermaster,” he says. “You can get them yourself.”

They stumble together towards the kitchen and, alright, Q’s more than a slight bit pleased that Bond, also, doesn’t appear as _lucid _as his façade would imply. M’s already instilled himself there, contemplating his computer over a cup of coffee. He doesn’t look at them when they enter, but his two raised eyebrows indicate enough. “Morning, sir,” Bond says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and leaning back in some mockery of parade rest.

“The effect’s rather ruined with your shirt untucked and sans shoes,” says M, without looking. “Oh, and yesterday’s clothes don’t suit you well, either.” Despite himself, Q giggles. Mallory gives him a sharp look, but there’s a hint of amusement, so maybe he’s not entirely toast. “Tea and coffee are in the cabinet by the window, help yourself.”

While Q goes over to make himself a cup of tea like a _normal, respectable person_, he notices Bond, out of the corner of his eye. Bond slams one of the pizza boxes from the night before onto the table, and, without preamble, shoves an _entire piece _of cold pizza into his mouth. Honestly, Q’s not quite sure where the pizza went. It was there, and then, in a flash, it wasn’t. From the table, Mallory gives Bond a slightly fed-up look. “It’s eight in the morning, you bloody great pig,” he says, mild as ever, and Bond only gives him that feral grin, stuffing another piece of pizza into his mouth.

Then comes the question. “Do you want to be reinstated?” asks M.

Bond sets the pizza down, blinking at M, and _just like that, _the warm, laughable Bond that Q used to banter with over comms is gone, just as the wistful James Q had drunken with the night before is gone. What remains is 007. Purely, wholly. His blue eyes burn with it, and he inclines his head. It is as much deference as he’ll show. “Yes, sir,” he says.

“Good,” says M, taking another sip of his coffee. “We save the designations for eighteen months, you know, before they get reassigned. You were cutting it close.”

Bond gives him a wolf’s smile. “Why do you think I came back when I did?”

M only looks at him, coolly. “If you think I’ll give you as much leeway as Mansfield did last time you returned from the dead, you’re wrong.” He stands from the table, a silent dismissal. “Q will run your tests this morning, ten sharp.”

At that, Bond does have the decency to look surprised. “Only the head of the Double-Oh division is allowed to run the tests,” he says. “Didn’t you fire the last one?”

Mallory inclines his head at Q, who would have been _much happier _to sit in the corner and drink his tea and nurse his raging hangover, but _alas, _all good things have endings. “Q is Q,” M says. “And Q is also the new head of the Double-Ohs. Perhaps now you’ll at least start listening to him, if not me.”

“Sir,” says Bond, deadly calm, too calm, and Q takes another sip of tea to hide his worry at what Bond is about to say. “I thought only someone _qualified _as a Double-Oh would be made head of the division.” The insult is evident.

Anger rushes through Q in a tight wave, rushing over all the good feelings from the evening before and bringing to mind only his ever-present vitriol for the man, and he takes another sip of his tea before replying, “Someone who does qualify as a Double-Oh has been made head of the division.” He matches Bond’s crisp calm in full, daring the man to challenge him.

Of course, because he’s Bond, he does. “We need to talk, Q,” he says.

Q gives him a mockery of a laugh, calculated. “Oh, I’m sure you’d like to, but, alas, your clearance isn’t high enough for the conversation you _want _to have.” The unspoken message is clear, and Bond understands it, for he stalks from the room without another word.

M turns to Q. “Well, that went swimmingly,” he says.

Q sighs. His head aches. Fuck Bond and all his expensive liquor. “Of course it did.”


	9. Chapter Eight: Tests of an Agent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m starting to wish you’d stay dead. Then I could have continued using all my funny little gadgets instead of just producing them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter chapter today, sorry about that! Back from my travels, so regular updates should continue. Next on Thursday. Enjoy!

Chapter Eight: Tests of an Agent

Unsurprisingly, Bond doesn’t show up for his tests. Not at ten sharp, not at ten-fifteen, not at ten-thirty. By ten-thirty-seven, Q is done waiting and strides off for a walk in the woods bordering Mallory’s property, if only to clear his head for a little while. He takes a comm, because he’s not stupid, and he takes a handgun, because if somebody wants to shoot him he at least wants a word in edgewise before they do.

After he walks through the woods for a while, kicking at old sticks and picking up rocks, the trees begin to thin and he spies a small gun range ahead, at the end of a narrow dirt road. When he shades his eyes and turns, he can see M’s estate on the other end of that dirt road, far behind.

There’s an awning in front of the range, and underneath it are a few waterproof boxes of various kinds of ammunition. Q’s still angry, and he’s out of practice, so he grabs a box of 9mm shot, unholsters his Glock, and starts shooting.

It’s only ten minutes before Bond finds him; Q swears the man is drawn to the sound of gunfire like a moth drawn to a flame. He stands, watching Q for almost five more minutes (in which Q pretends not to notice him) until he finally clears his throat.

Q turns, raising his eyebrows. “Ah, Bond,” he says, feigning surprise. “Late as ever.”

Bond frowns at him. “Where were you?” he asks, annoyed. “I waited for you to do the tests.”

Q holsters his gun. “And when did you arrive at our agreed meeting point?”

Bond shrugs, impudent as always. “Ten forty-five.”

“Then there’s your problem,” Q says. “If you’d been there on time, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“No matter,” says Bond, crossing his arms, casual as sin. “I’m ready for the tests.”

“Are you?” says Q. “Because the first test of any good agent is that of punctuality, and the second test of any good agent is to follow the orders of a superior. You did neither of those things, and so I don’t feel particularly inclined to take more time out of my day to pander to you.”

“Oh, please,” gripes Bond. “You know I don’t follow orders, especially yours.”

Q cocks an eyebrow at him. “That order came from M.” He turns back to Bond, holstering the gun. “Ten for the tests tomorrow, or you won’t get another chance. I’ve already interviewed a few potential candidates.”

Now Bond is fuming. Of course, that’s exactly why Q said it. He shoves his hands in his pockets, voice tight. “You _interviewed _others for _my _position?”

Q shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “You were dead.”

Bond looks dangerously close to throttling him. “You should have known better.”

_I really don’t want to have this conversation, _thinks Q. “Ten sharp tomorrow,” he says, walking away. “Until then, Bond.”

He doesn’t get more than five steps before Bond calls: “Why did they make _you _the head of the Double-Oh division? You, who’s barely held a gun and has no hand-to-hand training.”

“Check that target,” says Q, “and I think you’ll find that I’m quite good with the odd Beretta.”

Bond jogs up beside him, stopping before him and blocking his path. When Q makes to step around him, Bond blocks him with a heavy hand. “So is M making all the ex-convicts superiors now?” His voice is mocking, and Q grits his teeth at it.

“I told you that in confidence and with copious amounts of alcohol inside me,” he growls. “I won’t have you use it against me now.”

Bond’s grin is nothing short of vulpine. “I just want to know what gives you the right to order me about.”

Q laughs, bitterly. “I’m starting to wish you’d stay dead. Then I could have continued using all my funny little gadgets instead of just producing them.”

“When were you using the gadgets?” asks Bond.

_Oh, you know, killing people, stopping terrorists, the usual, _he wants to quip, but refrains. “Someone had to take care of things while you were away. All the agents were out of the country, most in deep cover.”

“So you decided to masquerade as a Double-Oh?” Bond asks. He looks almost incredulous, close to laughing.

Q almost rolls his eyes, but schools his voice into crisp, angry calm. “After the last terrorist attack, I was given full privileges from Mallory himself, and a temporary designation. When I finished the job, Mallory made me the new head of the Double Ohs.”

“Whose designation did you steal? Or did you just invent one?” Bond’s eyes are cold, shining with unfriendly mirth. The world is a great joke to him, and so is Q, and it’s never been anything short of awful.

So he takes the low blow. “Yours,” he says, as he pushes out of Bond’s grip and walks past him. “It suited me well. And it’s a mark on _my_character, not yours, that I’m offering it back.”

Stunned, angry silence follows him back to the manor. It makes him smile.


	10. Chapter Nine: Pathological

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Maybe you killed her, maybe you didn’t, but we can’t know for certain."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday, all! Here's where the second half of the plot really gets going! Enjoy!

Chapter Nine: Pathological

All’s quiet physically, but Q’s network has come up with thousands of hits. He spends the rest of the afternoon sorting through them all, dividing hazardous and essential from those that ended up being fake leads. It’s difficult to stay calm after his and Bond’s argument, their drinking the night before, and all that his minions back in Six have dug up.

Over takeaway curry for dinner, he hands M his computer. “It’s worse than we thought,” he says, grim. “The mole wasn’t anyone important, which makes it all the worse. He was a low-level tech in my branch, a Mr. Jeremy Steele. He started last month, but I was out of the country and didn’t get the chance to vet him. Using the Q Branch credentials, he got behind our firewalls from the inside and wreaked havoc. They know everything about us, now, and they want to kill you. I don’t think they want to do it in a public manner, though, because they want your job. I think they wanted it to look like a tragic accident. Five days ago, Mr. Steele turned in his letter of resignation and I accepted. He walked out the next day and I had no idea what he’d done.”

Through this, M’s face has gotten darker and darker, but before Q can continue, John bursts in. His eyes are wide, shocked, uncertain. “Lysander,” he says, “Look.”

They’ve blown up so much.

One of Q's decoy houses, almost half of Baker Street, M’s apartment _and _Tanner’s_and _Moneypenny’s, along with a few other places Q can’t connect to Six. BBC is calling it a massive gas leak, because the same gas company (Coincidence? Of course not.) had plumbed each of their houses.

There are over three hundred dead. 

They’ve blown up city blocks.

M turns to Q. “Is this Spectre?” he says. When Q doesn’t reply, M grabs him by the shoulders. “_Is. This. Spectre.” _It is only then that Q sees how angry he is, how _scared. _Usually, Mallory is calm, collected.

It terrifies him.

“Yes, sir,” says another voice. Q glances up to see Bond leaning against the door-jamb. Not a hint of worry lights his face, and Q doesn’t know whether to hug him or shoot him, if for the cavalier attitude alone.

M raises an eyebrow. “Where have you been today, Bond?” he asks. Some semblance of calm has returned to his voice, but Q is very good at reading people and can see through the act in an instant. From the way Bond’s eyebrow’s twitch and he clenches his jaw, Q knows he notices, too.

“It’s Spectre,” says Bond, deftly avoiding the question. “Madeline was to become the new queen of Spectre. I shot her, but I’m sure someone else took over the title.” His eyes grow wistful for just a moment. “She always mentioned how she wanted to go back to London, how she wanted a job at Six or Five, but I always overlooked it. Stupid of me, really.”

_Well, you are getting old, _Q wants to quip, but thinks better of it. M nods, terse, eyes distant. “Can you get me a name?” he asks, directing the question to both of them.

“Unclear, sir,” says Q. “I can get you a read on Mr. Steele, though. I put state-of-the-art tracers on all company devices, and, smart as he thinks he may be, he’s stupid enough to still be using his.”

“Where is he?”

Q pulls out his phone, taps around for a moment, and then replies. “Lyon,” he says. “He’s in a hotel in Lyon.”

M steeples his fingers against his forehead for a moment, thinking, and then turns back to Bond. “You’ve passed the tests, have you?” he asks.

Bond nods, looking for all the world like an eager puppy, but Q shakes his head. “He refused to take them this morning.”

“Of course,” sighs M, looking entirely unsurprised. He turns steel eyes to Q, and in that moment Q knows exactly what is coming—storm and all. “Since there’s no other agents not currently occupied, Q, you’re acting 007. Get to Lyon, find Steele.” He pulls out a few credit cards and hands them to Q. “Do what you need to. I will stay here and work remotely, so as to stay out of danger, and warn the PM—if he’ll believe me.”

Q nods, thumbing the cards, but before he can say anything, Bond cuts in, voice like crackling fire. It is every bit the anger Q had expected, and he bites his tongue at it before he can say something untoward. “Sir,” he says. “You can’t surely be letting Q go _on his own _to France? He isn’t an operative. He’ll cock the whole mission up.”

M’s voice cracks like a whip. “He’s more a Double Oh than you, Bond,” he says.

“With all due respect, _sir,_” Bond says, furious, “He’s a liability. Call in Alec. Call in Mariah. Let _me _go.”

“With all due respect, _Bond,_” M bites back, “It’s rather suspicious that you reappeared, asking to retake the tests, as soon as this whole fiasco started. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t trust you. After all, you did just spend _a year_with the proclaimed heir to the biggest crime syndicate in the world. Maybe you killed her, maybe you didn’t, but we can’t know for certain. And we all know what an incredible, pathological liar you are. What a brilliant, manipulative cur.”

Bond shoots Q a murderous glare (that Q only deigns with a bland, uninterested _sniff_that he knows will make the man livid) before he stalks from the room.

Q’s driving towards St. Pancras ten minutes after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, Q's adventures in France. What will he get up to? Tune in on Sunday to continue!


	11. Chapter Ten: Down, Down, Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond sighs in a patronizing way that makes Q want to kill someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday, everyone. Hope your weeks are ending well and that this brings you joy! 
> 
> As always, feedback and comments are always appreciated. 
> 
> \--C

Chapter Ten: Down, Down, Down 

Somehow, Bond gets to the train first. At this point, Q isn’t even really surprised. He pointedly doesn’t look at the man (who somehow had gotten the seat _directly beside Q’s _without knowing which train he was even going to be on and when), focusing on shoving his luggage (two large duffel bags of guns and ammunition, always a right bloody treat to get through security, along with Q’s personal laptop and three days of clothing) into the too-tiny compartment. When he finally sits down beside Bond, the insufferable man opens his mouth as if to speak. “Look,” Q says quickly, cutting him off before he can say whatever stupid and rude remark he’d had brewing. “I’m not going to stop you from coming with me. But I could. I could call M right _bloody now_, tell him you’re overstepping your duty, and he could have you dragged from this train in cuffs. I won’t do that, if you promise to listen to me.”

Bond’s eyes are vehement, but he doesn’t say anything, so Q continues.

“I know you think I’m incompetent. I know you think I’m useless. I know you think I do nothing of worth for you, for Six, or for the whole bloody country. You practically _shout _it at me, whenever you don’t bring your guns back, or whenever you don’t listen to my orders, or whenever you break my things because you’re angry, but let me remind you who kept you from getting shot, _three times, _stopped an explosion that would have killed you, and actually _stitched you up _once when you came limping in at some god-awful hour. You’d be dead a thousand times over if not for me and my _incompetency_. You’d be dead. And how do you repay me? You disrespect me. You don’t listen to my authority. You taunt me, scream at me, break my possessions and hack into my files. You break into my brother’s home and get blood all over his couch. You tell me I’m a liability. You tell me I’m useless.”

“I am Q for a reason. I am the head of the Double Oh program _for a reason. _And before you say I’m useless _one more time,_remember all I’ve done for you. All you’ve seen me do. Do you want to know how I learned all those skills? You want to know how I learned to hack, how I learned to shoot? How I’m a better Double Oh than you? Because I _care. _I care about protecting this country, these people, this whole bloody world, and I’ve fought my way up from the bottom to get here. I was homeless, for three years. I lived on the streets. I learned to fight, learned to shoot. I learned to lie. I learned to steal. I learned to hack. I learned all kinds of bad and awful things, things that kept me alive. But when I was adopted, I learned to _care. _Sherlock and Mycroft, those brothers you seem to hate so much, taught me that some things, things like family, are worth protecting. Obviously you never got that lesson, and maybe it’s why you’re such a hateful prick. But I did, and it’s why I’m here. It’s why I never fuck off to Jamaica when things get rough. It’s why I don’t drown myself in drink whenever someone I love dies. It’s why I’m on a bloody train right now, not as Q, but as 007, because I _care. _About my family. About my country. So before you tell me I’m incompetent, remind yourself who stitched you up, who picked you up in the middle of the night, bleeding and high, and _why I did it.”_

“I care,” Bond shoots back, defensive.

Q snorts. “Everybody who’s ever been on the receiving end of your particular brand of care is dead now.”

“Not everyone.”

Q definitely does _not _want to analyze that statement, so he puts it away for later, and fires back: “What in God’s name are you doing here, anyhow? Here to do my job for me, are we?”

Bond grits his teeth and the train starts to pull out of the station. “It’s not _your job_,” he growls, “because you’re not a field agent.”

Q cocks an eyebrow. “Were you not listening to what I’ve been saying? I could just tell M you’re here. He’d probably make sure you never saw the inside of Vauxhall while you were still breathing.” He sees Bond’s eyes shutter, and knows he’s hit the mark, feeling a disgusting sort of satisfaction over it.

“But you won’t.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Q snaps. “Since you’ve been so _kind _to me.”

“You won’t because you won’t survive this mission without me.”

Q crosses his arms, settles back in his seat. “You’re a cocky fuck, you know that? While you were away, drinking pina coladas with pretty Madeline, I was stopping the assassination attempt of the Nigerian president. It ended with a firefight, and I only missed being shot because of the human shield I was using, and the grenade I had in my back pocket. Call me incompetent again, _please_. It’ll only give me the excuse to use one of the guns I have in my bag on _you._”

Bond starts talking again, but Q takes headphones out of his bag, putting them on and shutting his eyes. Bond takes the hint, luckily.

They change trains at Gare du Nord, Bond following after Q like some nefarious bodyguard, and when Q boards the next train, he finds that James has somehow purchased the seat beside his once more. “Why must you travel in economy?” snipes James, like the asshole he is, and orders champagne for only himself.

“You didn’t have to sit next to me, you know,” snaps Q. When the champagne arrives, Q snatches up the glass and drains it before Bond can, just to piss him off. When Bond gives him a Look, Q just glares right back. “You owe me more than this,” he mutters. “You owe me millions of apologies just for dealing with you.”

Bond sighs in a patronizing way that makes Q want to kill someone, ordering more champagne.

When they _finally_get to Lyon, an agonizing few hours later, Q stops Bond in the train station. When Bond glares at him, Q simply presses the hidden gun under his jacket into Bond’s side, which seems to give him the hint. “Listen,” he says. “Since you’re insisting on coming with me, sticking to my side like some giant blond thorn, then there’s one thing you need to know. You are going to let me do my job. You are here to assist me. You are not going to do my job for me. You are not going to be cruel to me. You are going to apologize to me. And then, if you do all those things, I’ll reinstate you, and we’ll never speak of it again. Savvy?”

Bond cocks an eyebrow, anger still simmering in his eyes, but when Q replaces the gun under his jacket, pulling it away, Bond grins, purely and terrifyingly vulpine. “And who said we couldn’t be friends?”

There it is again, that casual needle stabbing into Q’s chest. Oh, I didn’t mean to _flirt _with you, Q. Oh, of course we’re not _friends, _Q. Oh, let me just whisper you sweet nothings and then leave you, _Q._He blinks to cover the heady rush of emotions inside him, forcing them down, down, down, into a box he can lock and chuck into the sea. “We _were_,” he says, making effort to not sound like the pitiful child he thinks he might be. “We _were_until you coerced me into giving you my car just to impress a girl. I was even dead-set on liking you when you got back, until you decided, however you decided it, to resent me. Really, Bond, whatever have I done to you?”

He spits the last words with vitriol and watches as something flashes across Bond’s face that looks halfway to hurt. Good. He doesn’t wait for Bond as he strides from the train station.

As it turns out, Bond had, even before they’d even gotten on the train in London, called the exact hotel Q had booked, cancelled the booking, and booked an entirely different hotel for the both of them. In the taxi ride over, Bond doesn’t say much, except to answer Q’s inevitable question with a curt: “I don’t stay in two star hotels.” Before Q can really start to wonder just what on Earth he’s gotten himself into, the taxi driver’s demanding his money.

The hotel’s nice. _Really _nice.

Q stretches his head up as they walk through the door to stare at the arched ceiling. “I can’t afford this, even on M’s credit card,” he says drily.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m paying for it,” replies Bond, walking up to the counter. How his suit is so well pressed after a morning arguing, an afternoon driving, and an evening on a train _escapes _Q. Had the scotch only been the night before? Q rubs his head. It had been a _supremely _long twenty-four hours. 

Scratch that, it had been a supremely long week. Q struggles to recall that only five days ago, Bond was bleeding out on Sherlock’s couch, nearly insensate and stupid with drink and loss and god knows whatever else. It was nearly New Year’s. God knows Q wouldn’t miss the old year when it finally ended.

He wanders around the lobby, half-listening to the conversation Bond and the concierge are having in French, just the typical _nous_ _avons_ _un_ _reservation, s’il vous plait, ah, oui, c’est en haut, _when he narrows his eyes, turning back to Bond. “You only got us one room?” he hisses.

Bond shrugs with a little smile, like a child who’s just stolen candy. “It’s you that was complaining about the price. Besides, I told them to get two beds, don’t worry.” He leans towards Q and whispers, conspiratorially, “I like to spread out in my sleep anyways.” He caps the sentence with a smirk, the patented Sex Smirk. Q’s seen it on grainy CCTV dozens of times as Bond seduces lady after lady on honeypot missions. It’s a thing of terrifying beauty. Q’s never had it used on him, and he hates it, for all its falsities. It’s the kind of smile that looks real until you pick at it, and see the rotten intentions beneath. 

He sighs. It’ll be a long few days.

Whatever Bond had been plotting downstairs is thwarted when they unlock the hotel room.

There’s only one bed.

If Q hadn’t seen the mortified expression on Bond’s face, he would have thought the bastard planned it. At least the bed’s large. Bond sighs. “I’ll take the floor,” he says, setting his duffel bag in the corner and sitting down.

“What, no _we have to share warmth to survive _bollocks?” snarks Q, with half a smile on his face. “You paid for it. I’ll take the floor.” To punctuate his point, he takes one of the pillows from the ridiculously huge bed and tosses it on the floor, settling down next to it. “I’m tired enough to sleep anywhere.”

“Mm,” says Bond, sounding drowsy, from the other side of the floor. “I’m used to sleeping on the cold ground, so even a floor’s a luxury…” His last word is punctuated by a loud snore and Q laughs softly, despite everything.

He falls asleep to thoughts of blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to torture everyone, I put a spin on ye-old "there's only one bed, oh no" trope, because why not ;)


	12. Chapter Eleven: Nothing, Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And they’re in bed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy thanksgiving, all my American friends! I took a break yesterday to spend some much needed time with family and friends. Next update will be as scheduled on Sunday. Enjoy!
> 
> -C

Chapter Eleven: Nothing, Again

Sunlight streams in through the window and Q groans against it, pulling the blanket tighter over himself and rolling over into something hard. He opens his eyes just enough to see Bond’s back, t-shirt riding up to show more than all those ladies Bond gets into bed can probably handle. He’s got his nose almost pressed against the crook of James’ neck.

And they’re in bed?

That thought rolls over Q like a bucket of cold water, and he sits up, immediately awake. Beside him, Bond stirs, giving him a lazy, sleepy grin like some great waking cat. “Don’t worry,” he says, sounding half annoyed, as if Q was the one causing all the problems. His voice is unfairly morning-rough, husky in a way that makes Q shiver despite himself. “I didn’t do anything. I woke up in the middle of the night with a right crick in my neck and realized how stupid it was that we were both on the floor when there was such a nice soft bed so close.”

“…Thanks?” Q says, and Bond smiles again, though the effect is rather ruined with his face all smushed into the pillow.

“You drooled on me a fair bit when I picked you up, but I snore, so I think we’re even.” At that, Q chuckles a little, then climbs out of bed to take a shower. It’s only when he leans on the bathroom door and glances at Bond, already asleep again and nestled within the covers, that he allows himself to think, _not again. _

In the back of his mind, not quite drowned out by the _taptaptap_ of water from the shower head, Mallory whispers _fidelity_.

_Your fidelity has gotten me nothing_, Q hisses to Bond’s back.

* * *

As soon as Jeremy Steele leaves out of the hotel lobby, Bond drains the remnants of his cappuccino, gives Q a curt nod, and crosses the street. Q watches the man until he’s out of sight, and then sees him _blip_ to life on the three hotel lobby cams, which Q is monitoring on his computer.“Clear,” says Bond’s voice in his comm.

Q hmms his agreement. “Take the stairs,” he says, as Bond makes a beeline for the elevator. “Surely your waistline could use that favor. And besides, elevators are too easy to hack—and by someone other than me.”

Bond huffs a sigh at him but obligingly changes directions. Q takes a sip of his tea and changes cams, taking a moment to glance up at the busy street before him. Still clear. Luckily, Steele’s only rooming on the fifth floor, so Bond doesn’t have that long to go—even so, before he reaches the top, Q has found Steele’s cell phone on the network and piggybacked the signal into it. “He’s on the phone,” he says to Bond. “Patching you in.”

“Confirmed,” says Bond, who has reached Steele’s room. “Open the door, please.”

“What, and take all the fun out of it?” asks Q, with mock sweetness, but he codes the door to open anyway. RFID. Described as unhackable. What bollocks.

He says this much to Bond, who rumbles a laugh through the comm and moves in. “Room’s empty,” he says after a moment. “Suitcase in the corner.”

“Open it,” says Q.

Bond doesn’t say anything, but Q hears zippers in the background, so he assumes Bond’s agreed. He listens in on Steele’s conversation with half a mind, the man seems to be talking to his _mother_ or _sister_ or someone mundane like that. Disappointingly, his tea is empty. He sighs, and is about to signal for another when he hears the tone of the conversation change. Steele’s talking in rapid-fire French, and when Q glances across the street, he sees Steele entering the hotel lobby. “_Shit_,” he says. “Bond, Steele’s in the lobby. Move out, _now_.”

“Negative,” says Bond. “Haven’t finished checking the room. Need to put it back into place.”

“Bond,” Q hisses, trying to keep his voice down at the coffee shop. “Pull out. That’s an order.”

“That I’m refusing,” says Bond, curt. “Do you want to know who his contact is or not?”

“He knows your face, Bond! If he realizes MI6 is onto him we’ll lose any advantage. Do you understand?”

“Crystal, _Q_,” hisses Bond. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to comply. Where is he now?”

“In the elevators,” says Q, typing furiously. “I’ve stopped them, but that won’t hold for long. Get out. We don’t want to kidnap him.”

“No, that’s not what _you_ want,” says James, like the asshole he is. “Remember, I’m not working for MI6. Remember, you’re not the field agent here.”

“_Remember_,” hisses Q as he slams the lid of his laptop shut. “That you’ll only get back into MI6 if we both survive this.” He hefts the laptop onto his shoulder, slaps a tenner down for the drinks, fingers the gun in his shoulder holster, and sprints across the street towards the hotel.


	13. Chapter Twelve: Ticking Out of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With that one line, it’s like a bucket of ice has been dumped over his head and one single piece is now sliding, uncomfortable and slow, down to the small of his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy December, my lovelies! Bit of news-- I'm going to cut updates down to just weekly (on Sundays), as I'm all three taking finals, moving out of my apartment, and driving across the country, all in the next two weeks. Also, I've only written about six chapters behind this one and I don't want to post too fast until I've got time to write more. Sincerest apologies! Hope this chapter makes up for it!
> 
> -C

Chapter Twelve: Ticking Out of Time 

He pulls Bond’s feed up on his phone as he’s entering the lobby. Inside, he slows to a walk, despite how much his body is screaming _runrunrungettoBondnow_. The only thing more obvious than a visibly agitated man is a visibly agitated and _running_ man. He forces his breathing to slow.

The little Bond-dot on his phone is still in Steele’s room. _Idiot_! Q thinks. Before he can move, the elevator starts again and Q furiously taps on his phone until it stalls for the second time. He heads for the stairs, taking them two at a time and frightening a poor hotel maid coming out of the third floor as he dashes by.

When he reaches the fifth floor (before the elevators, blessedly), he repeats_ in, out, in, out,_ and again until his breathing slows and he strides onto the floor as if he’s meant to be there. “Bond,” he hisses over the comms. “Room service.”

Finally, _finally_, Bond opens the door and ducks out, slipping it shut behind him. Q’s leaning against the wall, with his eyes on the elevator (on the fourth floor). “Got it?” he asks.

Bond nods, flicking his eyes to the elevator. “Fourth floor,” says Q, and Bond jerks his head towards the stairs. They’ve gone no more than a few steps before they hear the elevator _ding_ open and

In one second, three things happen at once.

First, Bond slams Q against the wall with enough force that Q wheezes as breath escapes his lungs.

Second, Q sees Steele get out of the elevator. They are about to lock eyes when…

With almost as much force as Bond had slammed him to the wall, Bond crushes their lips together. It’s ugly, and messy, with a hint of teeth. When Q struggles to pull away, he only presses him closer, holding his shoulders with a vice grip. Despite himself, Q sighs a little into Bond’s mouth, and that only seems to spur the agent on as he shoves his tongue into Q’s mouth with almost (disgustingly) reckless abandon. It’s as if he’s practiced this millions of times. He probably has, thinks the small and logical part of Q’s brain that remains despite the crushing and overpowering smell of musk. It’s as if Bond is Captain Kirk and he’s a fucking green skinned Orion girl.

Distantly, as if through thick syrup, he hears Steele’s disgusted sigh and the sound of a door unlocking and, only a second afterward, sliding _snick_ shut.

Bond yanks himself away as quickly as he had slid himself in. It’s blurrily, dizzyingly fast, like everything else that has just happened—and Q is left with a strange feeling, as if the kiss had been in slow motion and everything is finally ratcheting back up to speed. A watch, ticking out of time.

Bond straightens his rumpled shirt, buttons up two buttons which _certainly and definitely hadn’t been unbuttoned_ before (had _Q_ done that?), and, rather embarrassingly, wipes his mouth. “Lord, Q,” he says, voice somehow both husky and mocking, “How long has it been since you’ve kissed someone?” With that one line, it’s like a bucket of ice has been dumped over his head and one single piece is now sliding, uncomfortable and slow, down to the small of his back.

He feels his face heat. Bond’s gaze is heavy on his, stripping him bare. “You know exactly how long it’s been,” he snaps, in lieu of punching the man, “so _fuck off_.”

Bond looks for an instant like he’s been gutted, but he covers it smoothly with his favorite angry veneer. “That was a stupid move,” he says. “Coming up here at all.” It’s a nonresponse, and they both know it.

“Just shut it, won’t you?” hisses Q, already heading for the stairs. When they’re finally outside, heading away from the hotel, Q snipes: “Did you get anything useful at all?"

Bond grins wolfishly at him. “Only his journal. It seems a man with so much of his life on a computer thought it would be smarter to keep all his personal details on paper. Luckily for us, he didn’t count on a good old-fashioned break-in.” He thumbs through his phone before handing it to Q, who scrolls through a series of photos. There’s not a wealth of information there, but it’s enough. A flight number, a hotel reservation, and the man Steele is meeting with tomorrow afternoon in San Francisco, a name Q recognizes from the Britain’s Most Wanted list. He curses under his breath. “Morrow? Really?”

Bond chuckles. “Thought you’d like that. He’s the fucker that shot me. Come on, let’s get to the airport. We’ve got a flight to catch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally some action-- and a hint of a different history! What do you all think so far?
> 
> Best,
> 
> C


	14. Chapter Thirteen: Abandon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment feels pregnant. Q’s eyes meet Bond in the mirror, and maybe it’s only the heat of that blue gaze, or the strange silence of the moment that makes him ask: “Why do you hate me?”

Chapter Thirteen: Abandon

Bond books them into first class, and when Q acts surprised Bond just raises an eyebrow. “Not as if I was going to leave you in economy, now, hmm?”

“How much money do you have?” snaps Q.

“Unlike you, I don’t save for retirement.” It’s meant as a quip but the pure shocking sadness of it hits Q like a blow, and he forgets what he was going to say next.

* * *

Only minutes after they land in San Francisco, Q’s phone chimes. Not with a text, but with an alert that Steele’s phone, somewhere across the city, is ringing. He gestures at Bond to grab the luggage and picks up, only to hear a smooth, cool voice on the other end. “Mr. Steele,” it says, “My name is Morrow, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m happy to hear that your little scheme in London with the bombs seemed to have worked. You’ve done well, and… our little organization is pleased to potentially offer you a position within us. Meet me tomorrow at the rendezvous and we’ll discuss further.”

Before Q can even respond, the line clicks dead and Q turns back to Bond, shouldering all their bags with a curious expression on his face. “I’ve got an idea,” he says. “But you won’t like it.” A wild grin stretches across his face. “Of course, that just makes me like it all the more.”

Bond, for his credit, says nothing.

That night, in another freakishly expensive hotel, and over a few glasses of freakishly expensive scotch, a plan is formed. From the phone call, Q gleans that Morrow and Steele have never met, and, though Morrow and Bond are well acquainted, neither have Morrow and Q. And Q’s been careful to never include photographs in any of his files. Still, Steele might have reported what he looked like. Or there might be a CCTV feed with his face all over it. But it would have to do. Either way, he’s not taking any chances. So the first thing Q does, on the day he’s supposed to impersonate Steele, is go to a barber.

It’s rather amusing, the whole of it, and it makes him snicker while he’s in the chair, as pieces of hair flutter to the ground around him. “What’s so funny?” asks the barber, pausing his merciless shearing, and Q waves him to continue impatiently. It _is_ rather funny, though, that’s the problem—because while Bond is sneaking into Steele’s hotel and kidnapping him, Q is getting a haircut and some new clothes. It’s almost the opposite of their normal life, where Q is a voice on a headset, sitting somewhere at three AM in his pajamas and babying Bond through a cocktail party on the other side of the world. Q imagines Bond sitting behind a computer and sipping tea and the image makes him giggle again, even as the barber glares at him.

When Q opens the door to their room later that afternoon, he’s surprised to find Bond alone. “I thought you were supposed to be kidnapping Steele,” he says.

Bond glances up from where he’d been writing at the desk and his eyes widen, then narrow, at taking Q in. Q has to admit, he does look a pretty picture. He’d shaved before he left that morning, but that was only the start of it. Most of the riotous curls he’d always loved were gone, the sides and back of his hair shaved buzz-short. Only the top was left long, curls spilling over the sides. He’d lost the glasses, instead putting in a pair of colored prescription contacts that made his eyes a drab shade of brown (but were connected to the Six facial database, just like his glasses). And he’d bought a suit. The rendezvous, as Steele had helpfully written in his little notebook, was a donor gala at the local modern art museum, so he had to look the part. Luckily, he’d found a shop that tailored on the same day, and had walked out wearing it. It was, if he was being completely honest with himself, the nicest suit he’d ever worn. And the fact that it was on M’s credit card made it even nicer. All in all, he felt rather spiffy.

Bond’s slack-jawed stare made it all the more satisfying. At least he looked good to someone besides himself. Finally, Bond shuts his mouth. “He tried to kill me,” he says. “So I had to return the favor. Don’t worry, his body’s somewhere clean.”

“Lovely,” says Q, feeling eviscerated, and moves to the bathroom mirror to straighten his bowtie. He’s talked of death over tea before, but to have it discussed in such a dispassionate way makes his stomach turn. But that’s the nature of the job, and, if he’s being honest with himself, Steele would have died in an English maximum-security prison for what he had done, anyway.

Bond’s eyes follow him all the way. It makes him strangely uncomfortable, but somehow seen, as if Bond’s eyes are looking down to the core of him, dirty as it is, and skimming right over it uncaringly.

The moment feels pregnant. Q’s eyes meet Bond in the mirror, and maybe it’s only the heat of that blue gaze, or the strange silence of the moment that makes him ask: “Why do you hate me?”

At that, Bond starts, and his eyes narrow. “Why would you ever assume I hated you?”

Q laughs a little, self-deprecating, as he turns away from the counter to stare at Bond. He leans against it, crossing his arms in what he hopes looks somewhat Aloof and Tough, just the brand he’d tried so hard to cultivate, and not like he is a petulant child. Unfortunately, the latter is what he fears he’s succeeded in growing. “I don’t know,” he says, “only that every interaction we’ve ever had ended up with you insulting me.”

Bond laughs a little, but looks honestly affronted. He scratches at the back of his neck with an idle hand, eyes flicking down and up again. “I insult lots of people that I like,” he says.

Q raises an eyebrow. “But you believe everyone else is capable of doing their job. Not me. But you don’t fling anyone else’s past into their faces, or break their things, or steal their cars. But you don’t threaten to expose M’s identity because you’re angry. But, but, but.”

Bond looks hurt, for a split second, until anger replaces it. “Perhaps it’s because you’re not capable of doing your job,” he hisses.

“But you’re letting me,” says Q. “And M seems to think I am. After all, it was me who picked up the pieces after you abandoned us.”

There’s that word. It hits a key in Bond. In a split second, he’s standing, and in another, he’s crossed the room and is shoving Q against the wall. “I did not _abandon_,” he hisses. “I came back. I was always and forever loyal.”

Q scoffs, knowing he’s offending and finding he doesn’t care. “To Queen and Country, maybe,” he says. “To the memory of Mansfield, or your own twisted breed of obedience. But not to Six, not to us. And not to me.”

He doesn’t know why he says it, but he does—and it’s the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can guarantee this next chapter will be interesting for you all- and I hope you will enjoy it! See you next Sunday!
> 
> -C


	15. Chapter Fourteen: In This Office

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It will never be me, he reminds himself, again. Nothing is fair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday! Over the week I went back and fixed a few of the timing/date problems in this story (I don’t have a beta, so all my stupidity is my own). Nothing major—just a few “month” vs “year” disparities. For clarity: in this world, the events of Skyfall take place almost exactly a year before the events of Spectre. Also, because much of this fic takes place a year after Spectre, this means it has been two years since Skyfall and a year since Bond ran away with Madeline. Some of the chapters had it saying that Bond only spent two months away, but it’s really been a year that he was gone with Madeline. Sorry for the confusion! As far as months go, if anyone is interested—since Day of the Dead takes place in November I assume Skyfall took place the November before that. Now it is New Year’s and Spectre was over one year ago. Again, sorry for all the confusion. Enjoy, lovelies!
> 
> -C

Chapter Fourteen: In This Office

It was a year ago, which meant it was a year ago again from Skyfall. Q was working late, as he often did, and working alone, as he often was. The skeleton crew knew to stay out of his way, and his taciturn agreement back to them was to only blow things up during working hours.

It was just past midnight one night, somewhere near the beginning of November, when the security cameras alert him of the Branch door opening. When he looks up a moment later, it’s Bond. Dressed to the nines, with a sleek overcoat and gloves and a well-tied scarf, there’s rain in his hair.

“What are you doing here?” asks Q.

Bond shrugs. “I could ask you the same,” he says. “It’s Guy Fawkes Day. Shouldn’t you be out celebrating, or something? Dancing the night away, kissing a pretty girl at a masquerade party?”

Q laughs tersely. In all honesty, he’d forgotten entirely what day it was. “Terrorism waits for no holiday,” he says.

Bond _hmms_ in response, and pulls out a stool from one of the Q branch counters. He plunks a bottle of scotch onto the table like a greeting as he sits down next to Q, peering over his shoulder eagle-eyed to examine the line of code Q is slowly writing.

The strangest thing about all of this is the routine of it. After Skyfall, when Bond had waltzed in after his mission and they’d talked about M and had tea—Q had thought that was to be the end of it. But, at half-past-four, when Q had decided to finally call it a night, Bond had walked out with him. Then, because the Tube had stopped running, Bond had driven him home. He’d said goodnight, walked into his apartment, and had fully expected it to never happen again.

Two nights later, he realizes he has a crush on Bond.

_ It will never be me_, he tells himself sternly, and lets that be the end of it.

But, nothing was ever simple when one associated oneself with James Bond. Three nights later, after a simple domestic handoff, Bond comes sneaking in again. This time, he brings takeaway. “I heard one of the minions mentioning that you’d skipped dinner,” he says, as he uses an elbow to scrape prototypes to one side of a cluttered bench. He spreads out a large selection of Indian food.

Q cocks an eyebrow. “And which one of them mentioned that curry was my favorite food?”

To that, Bond just grins his feral grin, the one that Q has recently learned means he’s truly pleased. “I’m not a secret agent for nothing.”

It happens often, after that. Q will be working late, and Bond will come in, bringing some food or other such gift, and he’ll sit, and Q will work, and sometimes they’ll talk. Sometimes they are silent for hours, as Q types and proofreads and experiments. Sometimes Bond offers him suggestions on prototypes. Sometimes Bond prowls about and methodically cleans every gun in the Branch. Sometimes they don’t work at all, but eat and chat well into the night. Sometimes Bond takes a nap on the couch in the corner.

It’s routine enough that Q begins to think the Branch is too quiet when he’s on missions, and Bond starts bringing him souvenirs when he returns. So it’s not as if he’s entirely surprised to see Bond, but it is Guy Fawkes Day, and Bond is the kind of man who always seems as if he has more exciting places to be.

“Are you drunk?” says Q, because despite the dark, Bond’s face is obviously flushed. He smiles a wide smile, but there’s less sharp 007 behind it than normal. It’s looser, more open, but not in a cajoling way. It is a smile Q has never seen before, not even on cameras, and he wonders at the existence of it. “Not entirely,” says Bond. “But not as sober as you. You ought to catch up. Take a night off. Nationalism, and all that jazz. Can’t say no to Queen and Country.”

“Or you, apparently,” says Q, and before he can object, Bond is taking glasses out of his peacoat’s pockets, _Gods, how prepared for this was he?_ and sloshing scotch into them. Q barely moves a sheath of classified documents before Not Entirely Drunk Bond splashes alcohol directly where they had been sitting.

And because it’s late, and because Bond’s eyes are blue, and because Q is inexorably, disgustingly, whipped, he snaps his laptop shut and picks up the glass. Bond smiles another horribly disarming smile as if he’d known Q would say yes, and yanks off his scarf, letting it flutter to the floor.

By three, both of them are entirely hammered.

Somehow, they had ended up on the floor, sitting next to Q’s desk. Even now, a year later, the moment is frozen in Q’s head, as clear and crisp as reality. Somehow, the glasses had been discarded in favor of necking the bottle like teenagers. Knowing Bond, the scotch is probably too quality to rightfully do so, but Q can’t bring himself to care. The Branch is dark but for one dim light, there’s a prototype gun lying on its side across the room (Q had yanked it from Bond when he’d started playing with it, and skidded it away across the slick floor) and a half-empty box of pizza next to them (Bond had ordered delivery at one-thirty). Their thighs are touching, and their fingers brush when they trade the bottle. They’re laughing at a joke that wasn’t funny, and then, almost in unison, they fall silent.

When James leans over and kisses Q, it is the most natural thing in the world. It is slow, and alcohol-soaked, and makes the world go soft and muzzy and warm around the edges, like looking at fairy lights without glasses on. It is a progression, but not an unwelcome one. Not an unexpected one. His mouth tastes like scotch.

Another disarming smile, all teeth and shining eyes in the shadows of the dark Branch as James pulls away. “You beautiful thing,” he says, and Q lets him. They kiss again.

Again.

Bond says, “What would you say if I told you I wanted to stay here, in this office, forever?”

Q smiles for no other reason but happiness. Loose. Open. Less sharp _Q_ behind it. “I’d let you.” Then, because he is drunk, and stupid, he asks: “What would you say, if I told you I wanted to love you?”

Bond kisses him again. Again. “I’d let you.” His voice is low. His breath is alcohol and peace and something in Q’s heart trips unsteadily under the weight of it. _It could be me_, he thinks.

The next morning Bond is gone, as he always is, and Q doesn’t think to miss him until two days later, when a building collapses in Mexico City.

Three days. Q flies to Switzerland.

Four days more, and then Bond is coming down the car lift. It is late at night, and for a moment, a brief hint of a moment, Q thinks _oh, of course_, and is at peace. This is routine. It is slow, and soft, and muzzy around the edges. It will always be him. Bond will nap on the couch and Q will work and they'll go out for curry after and it will all be as it should.

But then, Bond steals the car and vanishes into the sunset with a pretty girl (not that Q, as a habit, keeps a categorical log of pretty women, but she is up there, so much better looking than him, and he hates her for it, every bit of it. _You beautiful thing_, Bond had said, great joke.)

_It will never be me_, he tells himself, a sad mirror of months before. He is as stupid as they come, as ignorant of willful wiles, and has done the exact thing he had sworn never to do. When M says _fidelity_, Q wants to spit at him, or smash something.

The worst part is not that Madeline is beautiful, or that Bond is saying the same exact things to her as to Q but keeping this particular set of promises, _no_. The worst thing, the absolute worst thing, is that when Bond slinks his way back a year later, bleeding on his brother’s couch, eyes full of insolence, it is as if they are strangers.

It is as if nothing ever happened.

Even now, even a year later, Q resents him for it.

So he knows why he says it, and he wants it to hurt.

Bond rips his arm away from the wall and stalks to the other side of the hotel room, and, selfishly, Q hopes that it does. “I never abandoned you, because I was never yours to lose.” Bond spits.

Q tries not to let the words sting, but they dig under his skin nonetheless. “When I asked why you hated me,” he says. “I suppose I should have asked when you started hating me. Because you didn’t, once. We both know it. And maybe you weren’t mine to lose, but a part of me thought you were. And I wish you had been. Maybe that’s betrayal, maybe that’s loyalty, maybe it’s just you manipulating me like you manipulate everyone else in your life.” It’s the most truth he’s ever offered Bond. He turns back to the mirror, straightens his bowtie, steels his spine. “All the same, because you weren’t, a part of me wishes you’d never come back.” In an instant, there’s tears burning in his eyes, and he screws them shut to avoid the sheer indignity of crying in front of Bond. Even so, his voice breaks. “Do you know what you did? Do you _know_?” He blinks, and two tears are on his cheeks, but he scrubs them away, pushing forward angrily. “Do you know what you are? Because I do, now. You’re a manipulative, lying, piece of shit who cares for _nothing_ and _no one._ And I can forgive you many things, even that you stole _my car_, but I cannot, and will not, _ever_, forgive you this. You knew exactly what you were doing. You made yourself mine to lose the day you first swaggered into my Branch in the middle of the night. Do you hear me? You. Made. This.”

Q wants to punch something, anything, but he forces his breath into evenness. In, out, in, out. When he blinks next, the tears are at bay. _For tomorrow_, he thinks. _Be 007, now. _

Bond, across from him, is silent for a long, long time. Finally, he says: “Do you know why I stayed in London?” he asks. His voice is low, quiet. Oddly still, almost lacking affect. “Madeline wanted to leave, at first, but I told her we needed to stay.”

“No,” says Q. “And I don’t care.”

When he turns back to Bond, there’s no anger on his face, no malice, not like Q was expecting, and it breaks his heart, all the parts of it that had been broken before, and some that hadn’t been. It’s worse-- Bond looks like he’s been gutted. He swallows unsteadily, eyes flicking to the floor and staying there. “I’ll be on comms,” he says, finally. Quiet. “In case anything goes wrong.”

_It will never be me_, he reminds himself, again. Nothing is fair.

Q grabs the ticket, adjusts his cufflinks, and slips from the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Q has been angry at Bond for this for a year now. Oof. Also they have an entire other year of drinking-and-hanging-out-and-falling-in-love-history, which is why this sucks so much for Q. In other news-not-news, Bond is an asshole. Hope you enjoyed! This was a pivotal chapter, and hard to write! Leave your feedback below :)


	16. Chapter Fifteen: Something To Drink To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Did you fight?” asks M. It’s the first thing he asks, almost in lieu of a greeting. Q doesn’t even want to know how he deduced it, or how he knew Bond was even there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, 00Q fans! If any of you are Star Wars fans, I should have some SW one shots coming out in the next few days :)
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> -C

Chapter Fifteen: Something To Drink To

In the Uber on the way to the gallery, he goes over the plan in his head again. Infiltration, showmanship, schmoozing. All the things Q was worst at. Truly, Bond would be much better suited for this kind of thing, but all the higher-ups knew his face. Q was all they had.

Their roles were somewhat reversed. Q, the face of the party, meeting with the head of Spectre and hopefully finding out more information, and Bond on comms behind, sitting in a café across the street. Close enough to intervene, but far enough to be out of range of any lurking Spectre goons. Or, at least, that was the plan.

At the door to the museum, Q presents his ticket and is immediately ushered into a grand ballroom where dozens of well-dressed, elegant individuals are wining, dining, and dancing. Q sees the ticket-taker speaking in the ear of another, equally well-dressed man. _Ah,_ he thinks, _so Morrow will immediately know that I’m here._

And indeed, not five minutes after he’s arrived, only enough time for him to make a circuit of the room, recording the scene with his specialized contacts, check in with Bond (terse, the bastard), and snatch a salmon hors d’oeuvre, before the same smartly dressed man who’d taken his ticket approach him. “Mr. Steele,” he says, “If you’d follow me.”

Q dazzles him with a smile, one that feigns disarming power but is terrified underneath. It’s one of his best acting smiles, he thinks.

He is led into a different room of the art museum, filled with modern magesties, where fewer people have gathered, and then through that room, past a _No admittance_ sign into a closed section of the museum. Before him, in a dimly lit sculpture gallery, is sitting a solitary man, his back to Q.

His attender beckons.

Q holds in his terror as he approaches the man. Morrow. _Must I meet all the men in my life at art galleries?_

As he walks forward, making sure his footsteps are loud enough to be heard, the man turns. Q’s first impression is that he is younger than he was expecting—almost Q’s age himself. He’d be handsome, all blonde hair and jawline and white teeth… if not for the eyes. Snake eyes, thinks Q. Untrustworthy. Then he scoffs at himself. _As if I would ever trust this man._

He looks, a little, tiny bit, like Bond. It’s fortunate, really. Another reason to guard himself.

The man smiles at Q. Disarming on purpose, but Q sees right through it. “So you are Mr. Steele,” he says.

Q dips his head. “I am honored to finally meet you, sir,” he says.” The deference might be overkill, but that’s the first rule of dealing with villains and their henchmen. They love to be kings.

Obviously, Q has judged correctly, for the man’s smile just grows wider. He beckons for Q to sit. “I am glad that you accepted my invitation, Steele,” he says. “And that you have performed the tasks set to you with such… gusto.”

Q’s stomach twists. The bombings. He forces a self-satisfied smile, and chokes out: “Anything to bring down MI6 is a thing I will gladly do.”

Morrow smiles even wider. It’s a truly disgusting smile, the way it stretches his face. If he smiles any wider, Q thinks, his lips will surely tear. “Have you heard of any casualties yet?” he asks. “Obviously there were many, but… any… of note?”

Q furrows his brows, feigning thought, when really he’s trying to remember just how much Jeremy Steele would know. “Unfortunately, Gareth Mallory was in a meeting in Cairo. It was top-secret, until he released a statement condemning the bombings alongside the Egyptian head of intelligence. As for the others, it’s unsure. They’re still recovering bodies, so I’ll expect we’ll know more soon. The Secret Service is rather tight-lipped about those things. An agent died on active duty while I worked there and barely a peep hit the national news.” That part wasn’t a lie.

Fortunately, Morrow stops smiling, hmms in thought. “Either way,” he says. “You have sent a message, and done us proud. Whatever the lasting damage is, if any, the more important part is that they know. They know that we are watching.”

Q smiles. “I’ll drink to that.”

Morrow taps his foot for a moment, oddly echoic in the cavernous statue gallery, before saying: “I have one more thing you can drink to.”

* * *

As soon as Q leaves the art museum, he walks to the café where Bond had been stationed. It’s empty. “_Bond_,” he hisses into his earpiece. “It’s done. Where are you?”

Bond’s reply is curt. “You had it under control.”

“Under contr—_under control_?” It takes him only that long to rise to blistering anger, again. It seems that these days, all he does is be angry. “Never mind my control, you had orders!”

Bond’s voice over the comms is even, but Q can hear the rage in it all the same. “I don’t care,” he says. “I stayed as long as you needed me to, and then I left.”

“We’re not a team if you can’t follow my orders.”

“We were never a team, as you yourself made it so clear to me a few hours ago.”

That one smarts. Q’s furious now, and almost rips the earpiece from his ear before he thinks better of it. “And _you_ made it so clear that you don’t abandon people, before you just went and did that yourself. What are you even doing right now?”

Bond laughs, clearly mocking. “It seemed pointless for me to be here when I’m not even allowed to do my job.”

“Lest we forget,” snarls Q. “May I remind you that you were not invited on this little _trip_? By order of M, _my_ superior?”

At that, Bond falls silent. He’s silent for long enough that Q thinks he’s gone off the line, and begins to curse under his breath as he walks towards the hotel. But then, Bond’s voice comes back on, clipped and curt and cold. “I’ll see you back in London.”

“The first flight isn’t until the morning!” snaps Q. “We’re stuck together for one more night.”

But Bond only repeats, “I’ll see you back in London,” and the line goes dead in a very permanent way that suggests a glass of water, or a boot.

When Q gets back to their hotel room, all of Bond’s things are gone.

* * *

The next flight out is at 10 the next morning, and _somehow_, in all his ineffable _whatever_, Bond had managed to circumvent the laws of British Airways and find another way home just to avoid being stuck with Q for another twelve hours. Not that Q had hacked into the airplane server in a fit of spite just to make sure, _no_.

He spends most of his time in the airport updating M. It’s a bloody annoying process, because he has to disguise his identity, then go and purchase a burner phone, and _then_ pay extra for international dialing (of the many things Steele had been, a hacker was not one of them) and then, finally, he calls Six.

“Did you fight?” asks M. It’s the first thing he asks, almost in lieu of a greeting. Q doesn’t even want to know how he deduced it, or how he knew Bond was even there.

He sighs. “I don’t know,” he says, honestly. “Probably. What I said made him angry enough to find another way home.” He laughs humorlessly. “With Bond, every day is a fight.”

“Q,” M says, in a vaguely dissatisfied manner. “I should no way be condoning any of this, but _talk_ to him. If not for your own sanity, at least for the fact of trying to get my past agent back.”

“I did,” says Q. He sighs. “And I’m sitting here in California, alone.”


	17. Part Three: Legacy. Chapter Sixteen: Black-Hole Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Was it worth it? Q didn’t know, but he was too far in to stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy almost 2020, lovely readers! Here we are, on the final stretch of our fic! 5-10 chapters left to go, with most of them written. But I'm plotting out a sequel, so I'll keep you updated on that front! From now on, past next weekend's update, updates will probably be a bit more sporadic, as I'm headed on a grand European adventure and need to finish writing the fic. I'll do the most I can to have timely updates for you all, but barring that, please know I have no plans to abandon this. We'll see her through to the end together!
> 
> As always, leave your love below. 
> 
> Thanks for reading,
> 
> C

Part Three: Legacy

Chapter Sixteen: Black-Hole Bond

Six months after Skyfall, Q is directing Bond through the slums of Morocco. He doesn’t hear the gunshot, or see it happen, but somehow he knows it’s going to occur as soon as the man steps around the corner. He’s not even holding a gun up, but somehow, Q knows how it will end. And he’s right.

Luckily, the man is a terrible aim, and Bond is only hit in the arm. Still, the sound of the gunshot echoing into his earpiece, a mirror of what Bond hears, the grainy flash of the bullet over CCTV cams…

It was, perhaps, the moment that Q realized just how deep in he was. Because when he’d heard Bond’s yelp of pain, and seen him stumble through his laptop screen, the flash of pain into his own chest had almost betrayed his killing calm.

He’d seen agents die. But seeing Bond shot, seeing the sheen of red blood blossom over the cameras, it struck him deeper than he could have imagined. It was the pain of losing Bond, but also the pain of knowing the inevitable. Bond was an explosion waiting to happen, a figure made of shrapnel and broken bonds and dead lovers. Everything he’d touched, everything he’d cared about, was gone because of him.

But he still pulled everything in, without even meaning to. Pulled people in without realizing that he would one day end their lives. Or, perhaps, he pulled them in knowing exactly that, but not knowing how to stop. His genuine smile, his snark, his true intelligence, the way he obviously loved so fiercely, and guarded his secrets so close. To fall in love with James Bond was to fall in love with a dying star. To look into the heart of a supernova and say, _yes, yes, this is the one I choose._ To say, _I will gladly pay the ultimate price, if only I could share in your brilliance for a single instant. _

Black-hole Bond.

And now, he’d pulled Q in, too. It was the sort of pain that was not quite present pain, but a wise, sad knowledge of pain to come. An acknowledgment of someday-hurt, of someday-heartbreak.

Was it worth it? Q didn’t know, but he was too far in to stop.

Q thinks he’s paying for it now. It is three days since Q had landed back in Heathrow, and there’s been no sign of Bond besides a quick check-in before Q’s plane had even touched the ground. He’d returned to Six to drop off the weapons he’d borrowed, then he was on his way again. He’d resisted all efforts to contact him, and when M had sent Moneypenny over to his flat and all the hotels, restaurants, and bars he frequented, the search had turned up nothing.

So much for fidelity.

But, then again, it was exactly what Q had known all along: _It will never be me. _

The funny thing is, it’s almost a monumental feat, because Q knows Bond, and knows that he is pulled into conflict like an alcoholic is pulled back into the wine cellar. And this was going to be a conflict. If tell was right, it was going to be the mother of all conflicts, perhaps the biggest MI6 had yet seen. Every single double-oh not in death-defying deep cover had been pulled in, eight in all, even Alec from bloody _Siberia_, whom Q had never even met. Some of the lesser field agents had been asked in also, and a handful from Five as well. The San Francisco meeting had ended with Morrow slipping Q an envelope, and telling him congratulations. Q had opened it in the hotel room after his rage at Bond had burned itself out into something cold and utterly more permanent, and had found a piece of paper with an address, a date, and a time. _Be there_, clean, blocky handwriting had read, _to claim your reward. _

When Q made to throw the envelope away, a familiar signet ring had tumbled out onto the ground. He had smiled despite himself, as he had placed the ring on his finger. So, it hadn’t all been for nothing.

The address was for a warehouse in London that was, on every record, abandoned. Technically it belonged to the Royal Bank of Scotland, but there weren’t many technicalities at all, because, as 005 had found out when he’d carefully (oh, so carefully) cased it one evening, it wasn’t abandoned at all—and it could be scarcely called a warehouse.

While the outside was as nondescript as could be expected, the inside had been gutted and rebuilt with a rat’s warren of tunnels, both above and an extensive network below the ground, and a large central room in the middle where Q assumed the higher-ups met. Nathan hadn’t been able to stay long, but his body cam had picked up enough—some computer rooms, some bedrooms, some rooms full of weapons that were most certainly black-market. This was Spectre’s base, and it was well-entrenched, well-_used_ enough that Q suspected it had been for a long time, even before Bond had run across them in Mexico City.

It was worrying enough that it merited a response from M, in the form of a “journalist” (truly a higher-up MI5 personnel), doing an interview with Blofeld, still locked tight in the highest security prison in the country, and doing as thorough a covert check of his cell as possible. It hadn’t been much, but it had been something: Blofeld wasn’t directly behind this. Whether he’d left orders to Spectre’s new bosses, they’d never know, but this new devilry wasn’t solely his.

Upon touching down in Heathrow, Q had bought another burner phone to update M, still at the manor house, so he would know the newest and so that they could plan. Q was sure Spectre had eyes on him, as he told Mallory, he didn’t dare venturing up there himself, instead staying at a hotel in the city. It made him ferociously glad that Steele, after he had quit at MI6, had sold his flat. Q wouldn’t have been able to sleep in a dead man’s bed, and certainly not a dead man who he himself had indirectly killed.

Over the course of the days leading up to what Q assumed was to be his initiation ceremony, a plan fell into place. The simplest thing, and the thing Mallory had first suggested, would simply be to not show up to the ceremony at all, instead to let the agents descend upon Spectre like a flock of locusts when all the men were gathered. “Me not showing up at all will be suspicious,” he had replied. “And there are still things we can learn from them.”

So, when 005 had cased the place earlier in the week, Q had sent him with a flash drive instead. He’d barely slept the nights before for tinkering with it, and had no idea it would work at all, just a bare-bones hope. “Plug it into any computer,” he had said, “And if it doesn’t work, we’ll figure something else out.”

But 005 had found an out-of-the way machine to plug it into, and, not moments later, Q saw the internals of the Spectre security system pop up on his laptop. He had nearly shouted in glee, then, and as soon as 005 was off of comms and safe again, Q had immediately bought him a drink. Then, the first bare-bones hope had turned into the second-- that the drive would remain undiscovered until the time when Q was to meet at Spectre…

And luck of all luck, it had.

It was two hours until Q was to meet at the warehouse, and he had checked the status of the drive every five minutes or so the entire day, out of pure mortal fear. But, somehow, it remained. Some beneficial deity appeared to be on their side, not that Q bought into that sort of thing.

He calls Eve.

“What’s happened?” she asks, picking up on the first ring. Her voice is scared, and he laughs a little, to dispel her.

“Nothing,” he says back. “No news.”

He can hear her smile through the phone. “It’s not nothing, or else you wouldn’t have called.”

He’s silent, for a long moment, wrestling with his thoughts. When he can hear her ask: “Q?”, he finally replies: “I’m afraid.”

“You don’t need to be,” she says immediately. Confidently. “You’ve got all of Her Majesty’s best right behind you, and me.” It’s the surety of her that he loves best, like all those months ago on the beach in Dover, when she’d laughed and told him not to worry.

“It’s not that,” he says.

“So what is it?”

“All…” he cuts off, starts again. “All my months on this job, short as they may be, have been this. My entire life for the past two years has been Spectre, and Bond. And if this all goes well, after today, all of that will be gone. Spectre will be disintegrated. And Bond’s gone again, probably for good.” (Hopefully, he doesn’t add). “What happens then? What happens tomorrow?”

Eve hmms over the phone, lighthearted enough, but with a tinge of sadness to it, too. This has been her entire life, too, he realizes, and it makes him all the sadder for it. “People like Bond,” she says, finally, “don’t last. Haven’t lasted. They burn all the brighter for it, and change the world drastically while they do, but they die, usually, right in the middle of their hottest flame. Bond was one of the lucky ones, or unlucky, I suppose, to survive long enough that he got to fade into the blackness slowly, instead of being swallowed by the sun in an instant. But still, he was temporary. People like us, you and me, we are what is left to pick up the pieces of this world.

“So we get up, we move on. You kiss a cute boy at a bar, and bring him to my wedding next March. We can get brunch and bring Mallory coffee. Travel, maybe, see the world. Or stay here, collecting knickknacks and boxes of tea and eating curries and playing Skyrim until we get old and grey. But we get to remain. We get to make the world better.”

She is silent, then, for a long, long time, and Q almost replies before she speaks again, sadder this time. “But I know that watching a star burn itself out is never easy. You can get lost in the beauty of the glow and forget what you are. Just don’t forget forever, okay?”

It strikes him then that she knew Bond in his prime, even before he did, and probably fell in love with him a little, like he did, because how could you not? “Thank you,” he says, because there is nothing else to say.

“Thank me by living through this with me,” says Eve, “because you owe me takeaway afterward.”

Q smiles, despite himself. _Brave new world_, he thinks.


	18. Chapter Seventeen: A King in Kind With the Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And it is in that moment that Q realizes that he is not a king, not here, not at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for this late update! It's been a very hectic few days in my life, but I have stable internet now so the next update should be timely next weekend! We're on the home stretch of this fic now, I hope you're all enjoying it!
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> C

Chapter Seventeen: A King In Kind With the Rest 

The moment Q steps out of his car outside the warehouse, he knows something is wrong.

  
It’s not that anything _looks_ out of place, no more than the gravel crunching under his shoes looks out of place, but something in the air is ringing alarm bells inside his head. Not just wrong—this is deeply, deeply wrong. It takes him another moment before he realizes that the only noise he can hear in the eerie evening silence is his own heart beating, faster and faster.

  
In a single instant, he is devastatingly afraid. But, he forces himself to square his shoulders, to inhabit the suit that he wears and to throw on a look of brash confidence, and he forces himself to stride to the doors. If James Bond had taught him nothing else, this much remained: be who you are pretending to be, as wholly as you can be.

  
In his pocket, his phone buzzes comfortingly, and then Q knows his left contact lens has started recording, sending footage directly to M and all the senior agents waiting. Agents are stationed all around the building, none more than two minutes out, and M is directly in his ear, inside a special little transmitter that he had designed to look like a very subtle earring. Of course, he can’t say anything back, but the fact that all of Six and Five are behind him make it a little bit better.

  
They are waiting now. They are waiting for the moment to strike. The teams will enter whenever he gives the signal, a simple touch-tap pattern to the phone in his pocket. Q’s already played around with the system enough that when he sends that message out, not only will it alert the teams stationed outside, it will cut the power to the entire building, throwing everything into chaos. And, conveniently, unlocking all the doors and cutting all the security systems. _Thank you, 005_, he thinks. He makes a mental note to buy the man another drink. Or a bottle. Or a car.

  
All these things should make him feel comfort. He doesn’t have to do much, of course—and isn’t even armed (for good faith). He just has to go, show his face, and be ready when the moment hits. Even Mallory reassures him, saying _keep your calm, Quartermaster,_ into his earpiece.

  
Why is he afraid, then? There is no reason for him to be afraid.

  
But something within him is still humming—no—screaming. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  
One of the burly guards at the door smirks at him, and Q resists the urge to punch him in the face, instead giving him a cool gaze back. Another man appears within to check his signet ring, and to escort him. Q lets him scrutinize his hand, then his face, and then pat him down for weapons, and finally, lets the man lead him deeper into the warren that is the Spectre lair. Within his ear, Mallory whispers _calm_, and Q has the absurd thought _is this how it feels to be Bond? To really, truly, be 007?_

  
He realizes that he hates it.

  
Deeper, deeper within the maze they go. Despite his best intentions, Q becomes hopelessly lost within only a few minutes. _No_, he tells himself. _People have reads on you. No, you do not get to do this right now. You are 007 for the moment, so earn the name._

  
Strangely enough, thinking of Bond’s brazen confidence, his way of slithering into a room and immediately making it his gives Q strength. _Black-hole Bond,_ he wonders idly, following his captor deeper into the rat’s nest,_ am I worthy of your titles now?_

  
In another moment, they descend down, down, down, until the man beckons him through a wide set of double doors and into a cavernous central room. It is not unlike how Bond had described his first encounter with Spectre in Switzerland, and Q almost laughs for a moment._ Evil villains are all the same_, he realizes. Dimly lit meeting rooms and subterfuge. _For the love of god, hire an interior decorator._

  
Morrow, standing across the long table, beckons to him with a wide smile. “So, Nathan Steele,” he says. His voice is light, but powerful. “You have come to us, to prove your loyalty and forever pledge your fealty.”

  
Q’s heart trips a beat at his words. Loyalty? No one had said anything about proving loyalty. _Something is desperately wrong,_ he realizes. But he forces himself to put on airs and sticks his hands into his pockets. He desperately cobbles together all his memories of Bond standing at mocking parade rest, every little thing he had done to show loyalty but not too much, and bleeds it out into his stance. He oozes calm. He oozes confidence. He knows what he is doing. He smiles a half-smile, painting it onto his face. “I thought I had already pledged my loyalty.” His voice is unbreakable. A king, in kind with the rest. “You told me to come here to claim my reward.”

  
At that, Morrow’s smile just grows wider. “Indeed,” he says. “But surely you deserve a better reward than simply joining our ranks. No, _you_ of all people deserve something _more_.” _He_ oozes calm. _He_ oozes confidence.

  
And it is in that moment that Q realizes that he is not a king, not here, not at all.

  
But Steele continues. “Do you remember what you told me at the art gallery? That you’d do anything to take down MI6?”

At that, Q almost chokes, but puts on a smile. In his ear, Mallory asks now? and Q shakes his head as much as he dares. _Time_, he thinks desperately, _give me this if you give me nothing else._ “I think I remember something of that sort. To what end?”

  
“You have been loyal, orchestrating that bombing. Every bit what I want for Spectre. Here, we reward loyalty above all else. You said you wanted to take down MI6? Well, here’s one of their best and brightest.” He winks. “We saved him just for you. Bring him in, boys!”

  
At that, he gestures expansively, and a few men move to one of the other doors. Q’s heart shatters in his chest. _They know, they know, they know._ _005_. But he forces himself to hold fast for another instant more, for as long as he can. Nodding at him, Morrow slides a sleek black handgun down the table. Not knowing what else to do, and at least knowing he’ll be armed, Q takes the handgun, making sure to keep his left hand in the pocket where his phone is. _Just an instant more, I pray_, Q thinks, and hopes someone hears him.

  
But the man they escort in at gunpoint, bruised and bleeding and disheveled, is not 005. It’s not Mallory.

Q can only glance an instant into the blue-blue eyes of James Bond, black-hole Bond, bloody, awful, hated Bond, before he hits the button in his pocket, cuts the power, and lets the world go to hell.


	19. Chapter Eighteen: Iron and Sulfur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Distantly, as if through a thick fog, Q realizes that his hands are shaking, and covered in other people’s blood, but he swallows, steeling himself against the terror in his heart.
> 
> "Find me a computer," he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again that this is late-- but I hope you enjoy! There are about three or four more chapters and then this fic is done! I can't believe it! But I'm plotting a sequel, so stay tuned for that :)
> 
> CM

Chapter Eighteen: Iron and Sulfur

It takes all of two seconds for the gunfire to start. Luckily, Q’s contacts are night-vision enabled, so he knows to drop to the ground and slide underneath the edge of the great conference table. In his wigged ear is chaos, pure chaos, as dozens of agent’s voices clamor over one another in a great muddled mess of noise. Then, blessedly, he realizes he can hear their voices in his _other _ear, too, his non-wigged ear, and breathes a sigh of relief when a man he recognizes as Alec Trevelyan neatly rolls across the floor to crouch beside him. “Comfortable, Quartermaster?” he says, grinning like hell.

They raise their guns.

A few seconds later, emergency floodlights flip on above at the same time an alarm klaxon begins to shriek, and the devastating scene is revealed even further. It’s a sensory overload. The mélange of noise is overwhelming—the loud _crack _of gunfire ringing, agent’s voices shouting over one another at the same time the Spectre goons are shrieking for backup, the alarm klaxons, blaring out a warning. The smell is all gunpowder and blood, and the disgusting tang of what Q thinks is shit. No one ever tells you in field school that men shit themselves when they die, and Q never ceases to be struck by it.

There’s already blood slicked all over the ground, puddling red and black in great swatches of deadly color. When one of the Spectre agents tries to tackle an agent Q doesn’t recognize, he slips on it like a cartoon character and careens with a _crack _to the floor, only to be shot by 008. People are screaming. Q thanks God that one of them isn’t him. He shoots, shoots again, ducking back below the table whenever he can. Across the room he’s relieved to see Eve, beautiful, wonderful Eve, firing a pistol right alongside all of them.

Beside him, he sees 003 tending to one of the agents from Five, holding her hand as she blinks in and out of consciousness. Then, a blur of motion alerts him to Alec, who has somehow leapt over the table. He ducks a knife that another agent flips at him. The _shings _of the metal are loud, blisteringly so, but the grunt of the man as Alec drives the knife through his neck and ducks out of the way of the visceral red spray is louder. Still, some gets in his mouth and he spits it angrily onto the ground as he leaps towards the next assailant.

Q aims, shoots, shoots again. He’s sighting for the men standing on the balcony above him, and watches with cold satisfaction as one of his bullets hits someone’s shoulder. Blood blossoms. The man crashes to his knees.

Suddenly, a scuffling noise makes him roll further under the long table, just as a Spectre goon reaches for him. Q lifts his gun. The sound is deafening. He blows the man’s nose off, the ruin of his skull gushing. Grimacing, Q scrambles out of the way before the man’s body can fall on him. Blood gums the floor, so much so that he can almost taste the iron reek of it adhering permanently to the inside of his nose even as it soaks through his suit pants and sticks them to his legs. Across the hall, an explosion rings out and Q sees a wall begin to crumble-- someone has thrown a grenade. Still the alarms blare overhead.

When there’s a moment’s break in gunfire, he duck-roll-crouch-runs across the room to Eve. Her dark hair bounces as she ducks back behind the table. She offers him a bloody hand to help him up, but when he blanches at it, she only grins. “Not mine, don’t worry.” Just below her, in yet another blood puddle, is a handprint, and he smiles back in relief. Together, they exchange gunfire, until Q is out of bullets. It seems like only an instant since his clip had been full, but now it is empty. Only then does he finally understand the Double-Ohs’ ever-present desire to throw their guns—he feels _useless_\-- but he forces himself to hold onto it and digs the knife out of his boot, hefting it in his right hand and preparing for battle once more.

It feels like an eternity, but in five minutes, the hall falls to eerie silence. Q has killed three men in that time, three men that will never again draw air and have only added to the mess of blood already covering him. _God, _but he needs a Psych eval. The alarm klaxons had stopped ringing minutes ago, but Q hadn’t noticed. When the gunfire and the sounds of the dying finally ceased, all that was left was the tang of gunpowder-sulfur, the reek of blood-iron, and the silence.

All around the table, Q can see heads he recognizes popping up. When he sees Alec, and then _M _striding in from the hallway, gun out but otherwise looking unhurt, he almost cries in relief. Standing up is a challenge on the sticky blood, and he steels his nose against the stench of the newly-dead, but still a great swell of relief courses through him. Only a few of the agents seem hurt. Q passes a dead man from Five and another from Six on the way to M, but most of the 00s don’t even look shaken. It appeared, for once, that the SIS had truly got the jump on them.

But directly after the relief, he realizes something. The wrongness from earlier, the dread curling in his stomach—they both return as suddenly as a knife wound. “Where’s Morrow?” he asks, at the same time Alec asks: “Where’s Bond?”

The knife stabs in and out again, the fear in Q’s gut solidifying like lead. He snatches the phone out of his pocket, heedless of the bloody fingerprints he leaves upon it, and types quickly A tracer line appears. The SmartBlood, reactivated. “Heading west,” he says. “Five blocks out. Go. Go.” When no one moves, he screams: “Now! Or his death is on _your _hands!”

Thankfully, Alec and two of the other Double-Ohs dash down the hall. Mallory turns to Q. “Can you get a visual?” he asks. His voice is calm, but the tension within it betrays him.

Distantly, as if through a thick fog, Q realizes that his hands are shaking, and covered in other people’s blood, but he swallows, steeling himself against the terror in his heart.

“Find me a computer,” he says.

* * *

In one of the adjacent rooms to the main conference zone, Q locks himself and Eve in and hacks into a Macbook. Mallory, doing damage control downstairs, has stationed two guards outside their door. “Get me Bond,” he says. “I don’t care if he’s dead, I don’t care if he’s dying, get me visual so we can send extrac teams in, _now._”

It takes him two minutes to hack into the Macbook and access secure CCTV, which is thirty seconds longer than it should have taken, but his hands are still shaking, badly. _Shove it down, _he thinks, _save it for later. _

Once he pings Bond’s location to the CCTV, it pulls up a grainy image cam, focusing maddeningly slowly. There’s no audio, but Bond, bless his heart, is wearing the suit with the hidden wig sewn into the collar, and he broadcasts the audio to his personal earpiece. When he hears Bond’s breathing, registers his still-beating heart on his vitals scan, Q breaths out a shaky sigh. _Alivealivealive_ is the song his heart sings, _please just let him stay that way. _

It happens in a disgusting, awful, unforgettable instant. The moment the cam finally blurs into focus, Q blinks at the screen just in time to see Morrow, to see Bond, and to see the gunshot ring through the air.

The bullet glints, shining in the streetlamp down the road.

Bond screams.

Blood blossoms from his stomach, and he collapses to his knees. Q almost vomits, right then and there. Then, Morrow says something, but Q can’t catch it. As if he’s outside of his own body, a calm overtakes him as he switches his comm to M’s. “Bond’s been shot. Lower abdomen. He has minutes. Get Medevac. Confirm.”

Mallory’s voice in his ear is devastatingly sad as he says: “Confirmed. Medevac in five minutes.”

They both know that it’s too late.

In his mind, he remembers Bond’s voice from years ago, looking after Ronson before Skyfall. Then, he’d only been R, back before this mess had started. Far before Bond had meant anything to him. _They’ll be too bloody late, _Bond had said, then. Terse. As Q knew now, worried.

Sad.

_I have to stop the bleeding. _

M, Mansfield, forever the stoic heart, had said _leave him. _

Q knows she’s cursing at him from beyond the grave, but _fuck her_. He can’t do that.


	20. Chapter Nineteen: Salvation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You don't need me," says Bond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for the delay! Only three more chapters, and then we're done! Hope you're still enjoying! No calendar from here out, unfortunately, as life has turned very busy and not left me with a lot of time to write. In addition, tying up loose ends is hard. Next chapter will be up as soon as I can make it, though! Also, sorry this is a little short-- it was hard to fit into an existing chapter so I made it one of its own.
> 
> Thanks for still reading :)

Chapter Nineteen: Salvation

He knows he is paying for it now. The sort of pain that had not been present pain, but now _was, _ached in his chest as James Bond coughs up blood in front of him. An explosion, waiting to happen, had just happened. Where the _hell _was Alec?

Morrow says something again that Q doesn’t catch, and kicks Bond’s side, a parting blow that is just for spite. He laughs as he walks away, loudly, full of mirth. Q hears it, and grits his teeth. As soon as he’s a few steps away, far from earshot, Q flips his comm to Bond’s line.

“007,” he says, _hating _the professionalism, _hating _the person he has to be right now. “Report.”

Over CCTV, Bond smiles weakly, eyes glimmering. “Hello, Q. Glad to have you with me.” He gets to his feet, slowly, labored. “I’m having a right jolly time,” he says. “If I ever tell you why he shot me, you’d laugh.” Bond chuckles to himself a little, a wet, labored sound that turns into a cough. When he finally stops, hand pressed _hard _to his side, his breathing is heavy. Q’s is nonexistent.

“Hold on,” he says, firm, the voice of the Quartermaster, “Extrac teams are on their way. Four minutes. Hold on.”

Bond’s laughter is raspy. “We both know we’re far beyond that now, Q,” he says. On the CCTV, Q watches him try to walk and stumble, tripping over his own feet before slumping against the dirty alley corner. He does not try to rise again, and Q heaves an unsteady sigh at the sight of it. Bond’s eyes flick to the camera, as if he knows Q is watching, and they’re so very, very blue. It’s a strange and horrible contrast to the red seeping from his shirt. _Please, God, no. _“Hold on, James,” and it’s Lysander saying it now, soft, quiet. A plea. “For me.” All that is left of the cold, logical Quartermaster is draining from Bond’s chest to drip, drip, drip, onto the pavement.

Bond coughs, but he doesn’t say anything, so Q keeps talking even as he’s monitoring the extraction teams coming in, three minutes away-- a steady stream of words, nothings, murmurings, until Bond’s breathing grows slower and Q’s words turn into somethings. “Hold on,” he says, “because I need you.”

Bond smiles at the camera, grim. “You don’t need me,” he says, breathing heavily. They are the first words he’s spoken in minutes. It seems like hours. “You need tea, and rain, and the quiet of the Branch during graveyard shift. You need Doctor Who, and your horrible record collection, and a good bottle of wine with curry. You need your brothers. You need your cats, and Tanner, and Eve, and your weekly gossip hour.” He pauses, taking a rasping breath that turns into another cough. Hacking, he doubles over on the pavement, pounding his fist on the ground. Q presses his hands over his mouth, feeling his chest heave, his shoulders shake. _Please, _he thinks again, but he doesn’t think anyone is listening.

Finally, an achingly long moment later, Bond stops coughing. He tries to sit up, but can’t, and he keeps talking even as he paddles his fingers uselessly across the muddy ground. His hair is dirty with the gutter trash. “For what it’s worth,” he says, then, almost whispering, “I’m sorry. I never really hated you, not really. But I treated you like shit, and you didn’t deserve it.” He laughs a little, cynical. “At least I saved you,” he rasps. “At least I saved one of you, out of the how many hundreds of you there were.”

Q laughs, hysterical, despite himself. It bubbles out of his throat before he can stop it. But then he thinks, _no, _and pushes down with everything he can to school his next words into something familiar, something unafraid, something, he thinks, Bond would like to hear: “You’ve got some gall, saying that as you’re the one bleeding out.”

Still, they come out all wrong. They come out _scared_ and _tired _and so very, very alone.

They come out like a goodbye, because they are.

He heaves in a breath in time to Bond’s, and suddenly he’s blinking back tears. “I need you,” he says, throat tight, “because I need to _breathe_.” He presses his fingers to the CCTV feed just over Bond’s chest, hard enough that the Macbook screen starts to fuzz rainbows. “I think I love you. I think I don’t know how to stop.”

Bond smiles at that. It is gaunt, and shaking, but it is a smile nonetheless. “What would you say,” he asks, almost a whisper: “If I told you I wish we’d stayed in that office?”

It is only then that Q realizes he is crying. Silent tears, the ones he had tried so hard to force back, streak his cheeks and drip, drip, drip onto the keyboard, to match the blood drip, drip, dripping from Bond’s chest. “_Please,” _he keens, again, as if his words could move mountains.

But for all that he watches from the shadows, performing computer machinations behind the scenes, he is no god. He is only human.

Between his fingers touching the computer screen, James Bond goes still. In his earpiece, the rasping breath stops, and silence takes its place.

Extraction is two minutes out.

Q is five minutes out.

He starts running anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger! *cue dramatic music*


	21. Chapter Twenty: Better, Safer, Kinder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q, he reads, it's Bond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little gift for tolerating the short, cliffhanger of a last chapter-- this chapter! Almost 3000 words, this beast was written mostly on a dreadful eleven hour plane ride I took almost two months ago and edited in chunks from then on out. To be honest I'm still not 100% happy with it, but it's as good as it's going to be, so here it is. After this, I'm planning only one or two more chapters (depending on how much wrapping up I've gotta do) which are being written as we speak. Stay tuned! 
> 
> Thanks, as always, for reading :)

Chapter Twenty: Better, Safer, Kinder

He’s two days away from finishing his required course of anxiety medication, and fifteen days from when he’d woken up, hungover on the couch with Eve, when a knock comes on his door. It’s the early morning of Saturday, a few days after the end of his forced leave, and he’s sitting on his bed in nothing but his pants and tapping away half-heartedly at a line of pesky code. The bang on the door startles him, and he whips his head up so hard that his glasses fall askew of his nose.

But when he gets to the door, palming a gun in his left hand and peering through the peephole, there’s no one there. Just an envelope remains, sitting on his doormat. A tidy, efficient hand he doesn’t recognize has written _Q _on it.

His heart goes very still.

He scoops it up and dashes to check his security cams, but there’s no one there. A few minutes later, once he’s looked over everything and found nothing out of place, he finally slits open the envelope with a small kitchen knife. Neatly, carefully, so as to not trip any hidden surprises. Surprisingly, there’s nothing but a piece of paper inside, covered on one side with cramped handwriting.

_Q, _it reads. _It’s Bond. _

His chest aches.

Evac had made it just in time, Q scrambling after them. He himself had made it just in time to watch the defib restart Bond’s heart, Bond’s body shaking on the ground, shaking, shaking, and going still. He himself had arrived just in time to be dragged away by Eve, barely lucid, eyes brimming with tears.

When he had woken up in Medical a day later, she had told him he was screaming.

But Bond was alive, and out of surgery, and that was what mattered. Apparently, Q had saved his life—saved his life and stopped one of the biggest terror organizations in the world in the same hour. He’s been regaled as a hero. He doesn’t know why it leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Medical shoos him out with a course of anxiety medication, more Psych evals, and a week of mandatory leave. He had celebrated, as it were, by getting disgustingly drunk with Eve and Tanner that very night.

He peeks in on Bond once the next day, enough to know he’s alive, and breathing, and _safe_. But when he almost takes a chair beside the hotel bed, almost decides to _stay, _his mind rolls back to their previous conversations unbidden, the pain and anger and sadness roiling out from within them, and he slips from the room without a word. He ignores the pain tightening in his chest, takes his anxiety medication, and goes home.

He hasn’t returned since.

_Perhaps it is better, _he thinks, the day after. _Perhaps it is better that it will never be me._

And he had been so, so close, until-

_Q, it’s Bond. _

_If you’re reading this, it means that I’m out of Medical. M tells me I’ve been unconscious for almost three weeks, but my side isn’t splitting and my stiches have healed somewhat, so I count that as a month well spent. I hear I have you to thank—both for my rescue, and for my life. So thank you, truly._

_Q-- I _

The next line is something Q can’t read, scribbled and scratched through with pen ink, but underneath it continues. _I’m shite with words, but I’ve written too many of these to start over, so I’ll just say it and damn the rest._

_ I’m leaving. _

A rush of anger sweeps through him, but he keeps reading anyway, and laughs at the next line despite himself. _Hang on, _it says. _Give me a moment to speak before you get angry. _

_M has retired me. Forcibly, if I might add. He’s given me the opportunity to return as the new Double Oh trainer, a position I think he made up on the spot just to get me to stop haunting his door, but I didn’t answer. He’s giving me some time to think it over. In the meantime, I’m going to leave. Travel somewhere, maybe. Lord knows I need a break. _

_ M told me you didn’t come to see me. In the hospital, I mean. I’m glad. I refuse to corrupt you, to break you, to drag you into my messy world. And for that I have to leave. Don’t come looking for me, please. Put me away and forget I ever existed. I would never do anything but cause you pain. I hope that someday you find someone better than me. _

_ Maybe I’ll see you back at Six in a few months, or maybe I won’t. Either way, please know that I ------- and that I’m sorry for all the things I put you through._

_ James_

A large portion of the last line is crossed out as well, and much as Q squints his eyes at it, he can’t make out what it might have said.

And that’s it. Barely a paragraph. His hands shake as he sets the letter down on his kitchen table. Is this to be the end of it, truly? Mallory’s voice comes back to him, from barely a few weeks earlier. _Sometimes I fear he’s more loyal to you than me. _And then, he remembers his own words. _It is better that it will never be me. _

_Isn’t this safer? _he asks. _Isn’t this kinder? _

_ Haven’t you waited long enough?_

He leaves the letter on his kitchen table for barely five minutes, drumming his fingers and lost in thought, before scooping it up again despite his better judgement. His eyes skim the words until he commits them to memory.

_ No, _he thinks, and then says it out loud: “No.”

His hands still shake, but he knows that somewhere within those lines, there are questions he needs answered. Closure that he needs rests between the words, and the only man who can give it to him left before he knew to ask for it. _We are not finished yet. _

But when he taps through his phone, pulls up the Smartblood file that, against his better judgement, he had never deleted, there’s nothing readable from it. There are just tracers everywhere, around London, around the world. That’s when the message comes in from R. _Just got in, _she says. _Half of the SmartBlood nanites are gone_. _Did you take them home to tinker with them? _

He grits his teeth against the agony in his chest, texting back a reply. _Bastard, _he thinks. _Bastard bastard bastard. Yes, sorry, _he types._ Bringing them back on Monday. _

Bond is gone. Bond is _gone. _Bond is gone and there’s no way to find him, not with nanites spread halfway across the bloody western hemisphere. So it cannot be done, and the final word has been said.

_It is safer, it is kinder,_ a part of him tells himself. _After all, when was the last time you did anything but cause each other pain? _

Despite himself, the words of their last conversation—in fact, _every _conversation they’d had in the past few weeks—comes spiraling back. Bond had left once already, but Q had gotten it into his head that he’d come back for a reason.

But then, coward that he was, he had up and left again, leaving conversations left unfinished and feelings left unsaid. “I refuse to break you” _my ass_, he thinks. _You broke me already, you fool, long before you decided to leave again._

Then, another message comes in from R. It’s a photo, of a crumpled pile of papers. They appear to be on the floor next to his bench, next to where the SmartBlood vial was sitting. _These yours? _

No, they aren’t. He thumbs his way into the security files before sending anything back, pulling up the cameras from the night before, when the graveyard shift was at its height. Around 4:30, sure enough, the carport door opens and Bond saunters in, checking to make sure no one is around before he approaches Q’s bench. Carefully, he selects the SmartBlood vial from where it had been sitting in the corner of the bench and flips open the top of the messenger bag he’s carrying to set them inside. When he does, the latch catches on a crumpled paper, ripping it from the bag to settle on the floor, but Bond doesn’t notice. It’s a bloody great thing to miss, being the kind of person Bond is. He just puts the nanites in, closes the bag, and leaves through a different door, silently as he’d come in. The papers glare at Q from the floor.

_Fuck, _he thinks. _Great bloody buggering fuck._

He stabs back a reply, _Must have dropped them. I’ll come pick them up before lunch, they’re important. _Because, what else is he to do?

Then he erases the security footage. 

On the monumentally long Tube ride over, he’s anxious without knowing why. Something doesn’t sit right with him, and it’s not Bond’s departure. He’s missing something obvious. _Why _had Bond come in through the car-port, of all things, when there are about ten billion other working doors? He doesn’t realize exactly what until he opens the door to the Branch, and R is smiling at him. She presses the papers into his left and something else into his right hand. It takes him a long, long moment to realize it’s a key fob. “Apparently Bond left us a good-bye present.”

Because _of course he did. _He turns, not ready to believe, but there she is. His car, his Aston Martin, borrowed and blown up and restored again, stolen and driven and fucked in and _missed_, and the source of countless days of anger. There’s not a scratch on her.

On the steering wheel, a note, in Bond’s impeccable handwriting, the handwriting which matches the note burning a hole in Q’s jacket pocket, the handwriting he’s sure he’ll find on the papers in his hand. _Take good care of her while I’m gone. _

_ I hate you I hate you I hate you_, Q thinks, lie that it is, but gets in the car anyway.

* * *

That night, when Q returns home, he’s driving it. The car that once was his, and now is Bond’s—even _smells _like him, in a way. And when he’s back in the Aston’s storage shed a few blocks from his flat, he puts the handbrake on, turns the car off, and finally, finally picks up the crumpled bunch of papers on the seat next to him. They’ve been on his mind the entire day, but he’s stopped himself from reading them until now, if only so he could have some semblance of professionalism in the workplace. Reclining the seat a little and taking his feet off the pedals, he unfolds them, carefully, smoothing them out one by one and steadfastly refusing to read the writing on them until they’re perfectly crisp. Finally, he picks the first one up and glances at it.

_Q, it’s Bond._

_ I… fuck. _

The next few are somewhat like the first, only containing a sentence or two of meaningless starter before trailing off into scratches. It’s odd, really, for Bond has always been a man of quick decisions. Few words, truly, but quick decisions. Really, he’s not sure what he expected, but even so, a monumental disappointment suddenly caves in his chest. Bond is gone, still gone, and Q had waited all day for nothing. _Just like you’ve been waiting for years,_ his mind whispers.

But then, he picks the last up. The fourth and final is cramped and full, covered back-and-front with spider scrawl. It’s long, so much longer than the abridged version of the letter he’d been given. His heart thumps unsteadily.

_Q, it’s Bond. _

The first few paragraphs are what he knows, and for a moment he’s disappointed again, but then the letter segues off into something completely different. 

_ I am almost embarrassed to admit that I think this letter is the most words I’ve ever spoken to you. Written to you. Whatever. And though you so often call me a liar, (I am) I feel as if you deserve some truth from me. Because, Q, I feel as if I haven’t entirely been honest with you. Of course this should come as no surprise. I am still me, after all._

_ I hurt you. Badly. I used you, and then I abandoned you. I will not call it something other than what it is—for it is the truth. But you should know I did it not out of hatred for you, but rather hatred for myself. Fear. This, too. Fear that I was not worthy of you, and fear that my involvement in your life would lead to destruction. _

_ Everyone I’ve ever given a damn about is dead now, Q. My parents. Vesper. M. Madeline. Dozens of other women and men and children you will never know the names of. _

_ Everyone except you._

_ Selfishly, I did not want you to be corrupted. I did not want to kill you. I did not want you to die because of who I am. But, I forgot that this is your job, too, and it has been since before we met each other. And, truly, what you said in the National Gallery all those months ago turned out to be completely right. You are far more efficient and competent at it than I. For this, I am sorry. You didn’t deserve it—any of it. You are right to be angry with me, but please know that I did not mean to hurt you. _

_ Q—you should know also that Morrow took me for a very specific purpose. The moment I landed in Heathrow, he was there. When I tried to fight him, he told me that if I resisted at all, or contacted Six in any way, he would have you killed. He knew everything about you, Q, where you lived, what you did, your brothers, even where we were staying in San Francisco. I had no choice but to go with him._

_ The first night they kept me there, he told me why he had chosen me. He knew that I mattered to you—that you would be more likely to do something rash if I was in danger. And he told me that he took me because you mattered to me. Because he wanted revenge, for what I had done to Madeline. He told me that he was going to kill me, slowly, in front of you._

_ Truthfully, I don’t know what changed their plans. Instead, he told me, I was presented as your sacrifice. Your test. But when the firefight started, he rushed me out to the alley. He pressed a gun to my head, and all I felt in that moment was relief. You would be safe, and you wouldn’t have to see it. You could be rid of me, and move on with your life in peace. _

_ But then he laughed, and lowered the gun to my stomach. He told me that killing me was revenge for Madeline, but shooting me in the stomach, where I would bleed out slowly, where you would be forced to watch—this was revenge on you. For infiltrating Spectre. For taking down his life’s work. He knew that it would wreck you, and it is exactly what he wanted. _

_ But you, impossible, wonderful you, still managed to save me. We saved each other. Hearing your voice on the comm, knowing you were watching from the camera in the corner, knowing that you had to watch—it wrecked me more than the bullet ever could. _

_ And that is why I have to leave. _

_M has retired me. Forcibly, if I might add. He’s given me the opportunity to return as the Double Oh trainer and division head, but I didn’t answer. He’s giving me some time to think it over. In the meantime, I’m going to leave. Travel somewhere, maybe. Lord knows I need a break. _

_ M told me you didn’t come to see me. In the hospital, I mean. I’m glad. I refuse to corrupt you, to break you, to drag you into my messy world. And for that I have to leave. Don’t come looking for me, please. Put me away and forget I ever existed. I would never do anything but cause you pain. I hope that someday you find someone better than me. _

_ I love you, Q, that’s the heart of it. I love you, and for that reason I’m going to let you go. I’m going to let you live. _

_ Maybe I’ll see you back at Six in a few months, or maybe I won’t. Either way, please know that I love you, and that I’m sorry for all the things I’ve put you through._

_ James_

Again, unbidden, tears prick at the corners of Q’s eyes as he rereads it once, twice. Carefully, meticulously, he sets the letter down on the passenger seat. He allows himself a modicum of peace, and exactly one minute to think, even though he knows his decision already.

_It will never be me, _he thinks, _but I still need to know. _

After exactly sixty-one seconds, he says, “_Fuck it,” _quietly, and with feeling. He taps into his phone, sending a three-sentence email. Leave time: four weeks. Reason requested: prolonged stress and long hours at the workplace.

Then he gets his bag from the back seat, pulls out his laptop, and begins to think. 


	22. Chapter Twenty-One: Fire Burning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is, perhaps, where it starts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello my lovelies! So sorry for the wait! In the past two months I have 1) been abroad 2) had to come home abroad in a hurry due to the coronavirus 3) figure out how to complete my online classes at home with a time difference and 4) deal with mild pandemic depression. But we're here now! Chapter twenty-one! This was going to be the big reconciliation chapter, but I couldn't wrestle it into a state I was happy with, so I split it in half. (Second half coming far, far sooner!) So after this, there's one more chapter, then an epilogue! 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me for this long! A few weeks ago was the one year anniversary of when I drunkenly wrote the story that would become Lazarus, and it's been a wild ride since then. I appreciate your comments and kudos more than anything! 
> 
> Stay safe out there, protect your loved ones, wash your hands, and social distance. And stay tuned for a new update soon!
> 
> \--CM

Chapter Twenty-One: Fire Burning

James Bond, lover of men, fighter of fights, ex-Double-Oh agent, knows a great deal about _wanting. _He wants like he does nothing else. Not skillfully, but dreadfully. Not elegantly, but messily. Messily, badly, sadly. When he wants, something usually burns.

It is, perhaps, the most human part of him.

He doesn’t remember much of himself before Vesper. She had gifted him both such immense light and such immense darkness in such a short span of time that it felt as if everything before her was simply _grey_. Lacking color, and substance. She had burned brightly, _so brightly, _and, in doing so, had set Bond alight as well. Then, of course, she had been guttered, extinguished—like all the other good fires in the world eventually were, and Bond, burning, angry, had been left alone. He had scorched his way through Quantum with the energy that was left, but by the time he had been sent to Turkey, _just another mission, just one more in a long list of missions, _everything was grey again, and he was made of ash.

Then he had died and blown away but was swept back to MI6 anyway, on a thousand-mile river made of bad memories. The towel had been thrown, but Bond’s love of country had always been greater than his love of self. What else was he to do, really, but return? It was all he was.

And then, the National Gallery. In only five minutes, the young fuck sitting beside him had managed to not only judge his critique of art, but also finds the time to tell him off for being old, _and_ jab with him about exploding pens. He’s already infinitely better than Boothroyd, the old codger that he was, and memorable enough to send Bond to Shanghai with half a smile on his face.

It is not a flame, far from it. But it _is. _It is a single, solitary ember. It is the steam that curls off a cup of tea.

It is characteristically Bond to think nothing of it until afterward, days after Skyfall, until he comes down to Q-Branch halfway to poke around and halfway to return his equipment to whatever imbecile was working graveyard shift, if only to avoid meaningful human contact. He rounds the corner and the Quartermaster himself from the art gallery is still there, at an absurdly late hour. He’s working at his computer but obviously hasn’t been for long; there’s a car engine halfway to being disassembled across the room, Q’s sleeves are rolled crisply to the elbow, and he’s got a smudge of grease high on his left cheekbone. It’s right where the rouge would go, if Q had been a lady.

Bond remembers all of a sudden that the Aston had been Q’s, the Aston he’d so wantonly destroyed, and feels a sudden swell of guilt. But then he spots a piece of it across the room, a part of the hood, burned to hell and riddled with bullet holes. He thinks, _I could tell him about the ejector seat, and how the left gun-port stuck a little when it opened. _He thinks, _I could tell him how Boothroyd showed me a prototype once that could be taken underwater. _

He thinks, _maybe he already knows. _

_ But maybe he doesn’t. _

Inside, deep inside Bond’s chest, something cold and dead and stinking of river water starts to glow.

This is, perhaps, where it starts. 

When Bond opens the door to his hotel room in Cuba, a lovely little room with a seaside view and a minibar, the first thing he sees is Q, sitting pretty-as-you please at the small table by the window. In an instant it reminds him of that first night, except instead of a blank page and a dark warehouse, there’s a man older by two years, with an undercut and eyes immeasurably sharper than they had been at the beginning. There’s sunlight playing on his face, turning his cheekbones rosy and his hair soft, but nothing else about the scene is innocent.

Q had been soft once, at twenty-six, he remembers. But he’d ruined it, as he ruined every good thing in the world. Before him now is Q at twenty-eight, angry, and alone, with a river of terrible memories between them. 

Q turns toward him, blinking at him coolly, and Bond’s throat goes dry. “How did you find me?” he finally asks.

Q’s facial expression doesn’t change a bit, the icy professionalism remaining in place so wholly and so well that Bond breaks a little, inside. He supposes he deserves it. “If you’re asking me that so that you can run again, and run better,” he says, “you can fuck right off.”

Even a hotel room that is up to James Bond standards still feels too small for this conversation, and so he heads to the corner and bangs around at the mini-bar, avoiding Q’s eyes. “I thought I told you not to come,” he says, as he pours himself a scotch. 

He turns around just in time to see the mask _crack_ and a flash of annoyance cross Q’s face. It’s smoothly tucked away underneath in a heartbeat. “Luckily or unluckily,” he says, voice tight, “I happen to also be an adult who is capable of making my own decisions.” He pushes a neatly folded stack of papers across the table in James’ general direction, eyes flicking to James’ and back down again without lingering. “Besides, you left these in my Branch when you left in such a hurry. I thought you might want them back.”

Bond glances at the papers and his heart drops in his chest. But before he can say any of the words threatening to claw their way from his throat, Q is standing in a single, fluid, motion and moving towards the door. “Where are you going?” he chokes out, utterly taken aback. “You’re always saying I’m getting old and fat, I can’t have this many shocks in five minutes.” It’s an attempt to inject some levity into the situation, an attempt that bounces off of the wall of Q’s well-practiced veneer and shatters.

After a long, awkward moment, Q blinks at him. Once. Twice. He pushes his glasses back up onto his nose, crosses his arms. “I read your letters. The one you sent and the ones you didn’t. It’s so much like you, to confess your love in the same sentence that you leave in. I suppose brevity is everything, for a man like you.”

“I’m not sure of your point,” says Bond, “considering you were never supposed to find that letter.”

“Well you did a bloody great job of that, didn’t you?” scoffs Q. “Truthfully, I don’t know what I came here to do. I didn’t expect some bloody great welcome, or for you to apologize, or even for you to come home, so I don’t really know why I came. I guess I just wanted you to know that I know. Your great secret, or whatnot. I do think it a tad unfair that you don’t allow me a choice in the matter, but, well, when have I ever been your equal in anything, really?”

“I don’t think that’s quite fair.”

“Oh, it’s quite fair,” replies Q, quickly and angrily. “Every day of that job we worked together, you berated me, _every day_, even after I’d saved your life, even after I’d accepted you back into my world, even though you _knew _that I loved you. Do you know how long I’ve loved you for, do you?”

Q looks close to tears, but he blinks, breathes, and they’re gone again in an instant. “Tell me,” says James.

“Since the Gallery. Even then. I’d heard talk of you, _oh, the man returned from the dead, oh, he’s done for good_, and I walked into that room, and there you were. Alive, and bright, and _angry. _It was like a lion staring down prey, but really it was just you looking at some ugly old painting. And the way it took me less than three minutes to earn your respect, like I’d won you over with a few clever quips. Oh, yes, Bond, I loved you even then.”

“I stayed in London for you,” he finally says. It seems like the right time. “Madeline wanted to leave, was begging me to leave, but I’d heard talk of who Spectre’s next target was, and it was you. And I couldn’t bear the thought of you hurt, I couldn’t bear it. So I stayed in London to make sure you were safe.”

Q scoffs. “If you were so concerned for my safety, why did you leave with her in the first place? Don’t pretend you didn’t want to.”

“It was the worst decision I’ve ever made, in a lifetime of terrible decisions.” He means it, too. “I regret it almost every day. And I regret hurting you. There’s no excuse for why I did it, but I can tell you that it was far more out of hatred for myself than for you.”

“That’s not a reason,” says Q.

“I didn’t say it was, but I’m trying to explain _why_,” says Bond. He takes a swig of his scotch, laughs a half-laugh. “Badly, at that.”

“I want to know, though, and _please _don’t be offended when I ask. Why? You saved my life, so many times. You have given me so much more than I deserve, gadgets and toys and good things, and you never turned your back on me. All I’ve done is be cruel to you, this past year? Why? Why, _still?_”

Q sighs. “Because there was a long time when you weren’t cruel, and because that’s the part of you I believe is real. And because I love you. Damn it all to hell, but I love you. By the time you got back I was too far gone to stop.”

“Let me take you to dinner,” says Bond, a moment later. He makes the decision quickly, because nothing good in his life has come from hesitance. “It’s what you deserve. Not dark offices, and not near-death experiences. Just dinner. You don’t have to do anything after that.”

Q’s eyes sparkle, just a little, and that’s enough. “Tomorrow night,” he says, finally. “There’s a new place in Camden I’ve heard is just brilliant. Pick me up at eight.”

Bond blinks at him. “We’re on a tropical island, and you want to go back to London?”

“I’m not letting you run from your problems again,” he says. “If you want to take me to dinner, come home. Come back where you belong and _stop running_. If you can’t do that, I think it would be best if we never saw each other again. London is where I belong, and it’s where I will stay.”

“Wasn’t your flat blown up?” asks Bond.

“I have decoys, Bond,” says Q. “And if that was an attempt to get me to come home with you, you’ll have to do better than that.” But his eyes have just a hint of mirth in them, and that’s a start.

“How so?” he asks, wolfishly, with a _who, me? _look.

“Dinner,” says Q. “That’s the first step. After that, well, I guess we’ll see. Make no mistake, I’m nowhere close to forgiving you, or letting you back into my life.”

Bond sighs. “I suppose I deserve it.”

Q blinks at him steadily, seeing all. There’s hesitance there, just a hint of it. But, with one fluid motion, he seems to come to some internal stillness and opens the door smoothly. “I have a flight to catch,” he says, in lieu of a goodbye. “I’ll see you tomorrow, or not.”

“Wait!” says James, as Q slips from the room. “Don’t go yet.”

“Follow me, then,” says Q, with a halfway smile on his face.

Then he’s gone, down the hallway. Bond makes no move to run after him, and Q doesn’t turn around before he slips through the elevator door.

Inside, deep inside James, a fire still glows. It’s hot enough now to sting his chest.

He presses a hand to his breastbone and finishes his scotch. 


	23. Chapter Twenty-Two: Lazarus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How dull it is to pause, to make an end, he thinks. Tennyson had always said it best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are! The final chapter of Lazarus! Tomorrow I'll post the epilogue, and then the curtains will close on this first little story! Sequel planning is going well-- I'll mention more about it in tomorrow's notes! 
> 
> As always, thank you for your endless love and support over these past many months. It's wonderful to make a work people enjoy. What started as a drunken evening after a Bond marathon continued as a labor of love, and ended, as it should have, with another Bond marathon. A fitting conclusion, I think.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Lazarus

Q receives a text from an unlisted number early the next day. _Black tie?_

He smiles back at it. _Not unless you want to look even more old than usual in the middle of the Camden hipster crowd. _

The response _pings _back a moment later. _No tie, then. _

And then: _Why aren’t you driving? You have the pretty car, after all._

He sends back: _I’m reasonably convinced that if you get within five feet of that car, I’ll never see it again. Besides, you’re supposed to be apologizing. _

Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, his front-door alerts buzz two minutes after twenty hours. He glances at the camera-feed out of the corner of his eye, half expecting it to be the postman, or Eve, but it truly is Bond, standing there looking sheepish on his doorstep. He’s taken Q’s advice and isn’t wearing a suit, instead opting for a simple collared shirt and well-tailored pants. His black peacoat is hung neatly over his arm.

For better or worse (he’s not sure which just yet), he opens the door.

Bond looks up at him immediately from where he’d been adjusting his cuffs, blue eyes hopeful. “Are you surprised to see me?”

“Mildly,” admits Q, as he puts on his coat.

“Well, someone once told me I treat people like disposable pleasures and not meaningful pursuits. Perhaps I want to change that.”

“Perhaps,” Q agrees. “God rest her soul for teaching you how to love a person.”

Bond gives him an amused glance as they start down the stairs. “No, I’ve always loved people. Too much, even. God rest Vesper’s soul for teaching me how to love them _well_.”

The restaurant is every bit as hipster as Q had promised, with interesting wine and fru-fru cocktails that James wholeheartedly scoffs at until the precise moment he tries one. Q orders the garlic bread appetizer. Bond gets the tartar, because he’s a posh git.

They don’t talk about work. Or rather, they talk about work _without _talking about work, because their entire lives are devoted to Queen and Country, and yet, enjoyably so. Q discovers that James’ favorite color is green, and tells James about his love of obscure board games as recompense, a fact that James both laughs at and seems to appreciate. James brings up the merits and shortcomings of the American government. Q reminisces about how the lightsabers in _Star Wars_ were only _almost_ plausible. They argue over the proper way to oil a gun.

It’s fun. Simple, in a way they haven’t been since those many nights in Q-Branch so many months ago.

Somewhere between the entrée and the second bottle of wine, they get to talking about old relationships, and Q finally hears the story of Vesper, the _full_ story, from ugly start to uglier end. Then, the story of Madeline. When Bond looks at him expectantly, Q shrugs. “I’m afraid my middle brother has monopolized questionable relationships for our family.”

Bond grins. “Ah, yes, the ex-heroin addict detective marries the psychosomatic army doctor. Love at first sight.”

Q throws his head back, and laughs, unabashedly and loud. “It’s all your fault anyway. You’re the one that saved his life.” He grins. “Ah, well, I like John. He’s good for my brother. So I suppose I should thank you. Either way, my only truly questionable relationship is you.”

Bond feigns affront, slapping a hand to his chest dramatically. “Me? I’m a veritable saint.”

“You are,” remarks Q drily, “worse than Han Solo. And I mean that in every possible way, both good and bad.” He takes a sip of his wine.

James dazzles him with one of his classic 007 grins. He’s sure there’s a patent on it, somewhere, ready to be filed. “And yet,” he says, leaning on his elbow to get a closer look at Q, “you haven’t left yet.”

Q lifts his wine glass in a silent and amused agreement.

Afterward, the two of them wander aimlessly out into the dark street. Bond is strolling along like he always does, tipsy and cavalier, with his hands in his pockets like he owns the world. Q follows along behind, slightly slower, slightly less stumbling. “I have your keys,” he says, jingling them affably.

Bond raises an eyebrow over his shoulder. “What, you don’t condone drunk driving?”

“Unfortunately for you, Bond, you’re not currently on mission. And, as I recall, I possess a great deal more sense than you.”

“So how are we getting home, then, oh mighty Q?” James teases, trying half-heartedly to snatch the keys back from Q’s open palm.

“_I_,” he says putting emphasis on the letter, “am going into the Branch. I need to look over a system. I got a report over dinner that something didn’t restart correctly. Should be an easy fix.” He points finger-guns at Bond, _pew-pew-ing _them silently. “_You _can come with me, if you’d like. And, if you do come, I could, possibly, be persuaded to stop for takeaway. There’s a place a few blocks from Six that does incredible donuts, and they’re open twenty-four hours.”

“Like old times’ sake, eh?” Bond grins at him then, open and loose, rocking back and forth on his heels against the curb. His hair is silver in the moonlight. He looks at once the same man Q had met in the National Gallery, the same man he’d watched in debrief footage from so many years ago, and yet so different. Calmer, perhaps. Wary, yes, careful, but not about to go supernova. Grounded, sure. Just emitting constant, present light.

In that moment, he decides.

_How dull it is to pause, to make an end, _he thinks. Tennyson had always said it best; M-the-former had imparted that on him, among many other lessons. To move forward, he realizes, one has to be willing to step into the unknown.

“Like new times’ sake, I think,” he says. This could be a terrible idea, but he finds he doesn’t care. “If you’ll have it.”

Bond’s answering smile is warm like the sun.

Later, so much later, they clink their mugs together over Q’s computer. A half-eaten dozen sits on the already-cluttered desk, going stale. Inside the pretty pink box. “Are you done now?” rumbles Bond, from the stool beside him. “Surely your firewalls are impeccable.”

Q pushes his glasses up onto his nose and shuts his laptop. “The minute you enroll in a uni coding class, I will _certainly_ come to you for help with my firewalls.”

Bond shrugs. “I _did_ hack into M’s computer, you know,” he points out.

Q smiles, remembering. “While commendable, that was more to the credit of your eidetic memory for passwords and less to the credit of your nonexistent dev skills.”

Bond finishes his tea, setting the mug down with an audible _clank_. When he looks up at Q, it’s like the mood’s shifted in the room. Something is hanging, close enough to touch, there in the air. Bond’s eyes are blue, so blue, and Q swallows under the weight of that gaze. He knows what’s coming next, but even as it does, it still shocks him, just a little. “What would you say,” asks Bond, so slow, so _pointed_, “if I told you I wanted to stay here, in this office, forever?”

Q’s heart is a loud and fluttering thing inside his chest. “I’d say that’s quite a sacrifice to make on your part, when I’ve heard reliable reviews of the comfort of my bed.”

Bond blinks, surprise flitting over his features. He looks positively delighted. “Don’t tell me you have a string of secret lovers.”

“Not everyone can be _you_,” he says, “But a man does get lonely from time to time.

“Q”, murmurs Bond, a wicked grin on his face. “Are you propositioning me?”

“Someone has to do it. Can’t have you taking all the fun.”

“I thought you hated me.”

Q sighs, but there’s no real anger in it, drumming his fingers on the top of his laptop. “Don’t give yourself _too_ much credit. Despite your many _incredible_ personality quirks, you are a rather hard person to hate. Although, I have it on valuable authority that if you hurt me again, at least three people would try to kill you. Myself as a fourth.” 

“I would expect no less,” laughs Bond. “So, what happens now?”

Q glances at his watch. “It’s oh-thirty on a Saturday and I’m not properly drunk. I think that ought to be remedied, don’t you? I might, even, have a liquor cabinet you approve of.”

“What, no tea-infused gin, or something comparably vile?”

Q smacks Bond affably on the shoulder and gets up to grab his coat. “For that remark, you’re sticking to water. Are you coming or not?”  
James smiles at him from the stool, blue eyes crinkling. “If you haven’t figured out that I’d follow you around the world by now, you’re hopeless.”

“You already did,” points out Q. “Following me back a cozy apartment and a glass of Scotch should be easier.” He cocks his head at Bond. “Isn’t that what you said you wanted, at the end of everything? The first night we ever did this. What was it, _a long drive, wind in your hair—”_

_ “_And a good bottle of Scotch at the end,” James finishes, standing in one fluid motion. His blue eyes are deep in thought. “I think I lied,” he admits, after a moment.

“About what?”

Bond smiles a little half-smile, shaking his head. He’s not meeting Q’s eyes. “I think I lied because some part of me already knew that everything I wanted was right here, in this room, and I thought it an idea that would one day kill someone.”

“It did, says Q, gentle, “it killed _you_. I watched your heart stop. In that alley. I watched the medics defib you.” A little laugh bubbles out of him, despite himself. “I suppose you’re Lazarus after all.” In a moment of bravery, or perhaps a moment of weakness, he steps forward and puts a hand to James’ cheek. “Do you remember what I said to you that night In Mallory’s house? I don’t think the world is done with us yet.”

James’ blue eyes are faraway. “Are you trying to save me, Q?” His voice is aching. Shuttered.

Their conversation flickers behind his eyes. The drink Bond had thrown against the wall. The fire, burning low. His own hurting heart. So he knows exactly what he has to say: “Define salvation. “

He takes a deep breath in, trying to settle his heart. Gently, so gently, he brings his other hand up to Bond’s cheek. James’ eyes shut slowly. “Because I _did_. Because here we are, in the infinity afterward. Eating takeaway and restarting wily systems. And we can do it all again tomorrow, too. And the day after. Isn’t it beautiful, life with no consequences? No debts owed, or paid? Just life, moving forward.”

“Brave new world,” whispers James. He chuckles a quiet laugh. “The inevitability of time, don’t you think?”

Their mouths meet there, in the afterward. No time limits, no missions or targets or bombings or places to be. Just them. There, in the dim darkness of the Branch, with computers humming contentedly behind them and the remnants of Earl Grey growing cold on the workbench. Where it started, and where it remained.

It was, indeed, beautiful.


	24. Epilogue: Exhalation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Infinity is the exhale before the long dive.

Epilogue: Exhalation

“How did she have time?” James had asked, absentmindedly, seconds or months or years ago.

“Who?” Q had replied. He hadn’t even glanced up. It had been absurdly late, and James shouldn’t have even really been there, in the Branch. But he had been, just the same.

“Mansfield,” he had said. Musing, yes, but really just looking for a way to begin a conversation. “She had a husband, kids, a whole life outside of Vauxhall. How did she have time for that _and _all of us?”

Q had blinked, behind his glasses. “Is that what you want, 007?” His perfect pronunciation, curling around his title, still sticks in Bond’s mind all these months later. _Double-Oh-Seven. _

James had only laughed. “The part of me that deserved a life like that that died with Vesper Lynd.” And that was to be the end of it. A quip, a tiny self-deprecation. Simple, comfortable, known.

But Q had kept looking at James, as he’d been looking for months, and James had looked back, as he’d been looking back for months. “I didn’t ask what you _deserved_, James,” he says. It is the first time he has ever used his name. (The next, he thinks, is when they are both too drunk and too honest, and the _next _after that, well, James doesn’t want to remember how the Quartermaster’s voice had shaken in that instant). “I asked what you wanted.”

Green eyes. A solitary lamp flickering above. Guttering impulse control.

The moment, if it was such a thing, was over before it had begun.

But that hadn’t been the real story.

The real story is this: after the fidelity, and the honesty, and the legacy, all that remained was infinity, stretching forward. Infinity, to James Bond, was a beautiful thing, if wholly unknown to him. But it is taking form. Infinity, it seems, has the general shape of a loft apartment, two cats, a couch one can get lost in, and too many kinds of tea in the kitchen. Infinity is waking up without an alarm, internal clock gone lazy and slow, with Q blinking sleepily beside him and stretching for his glasses. Infinity is curling steam off of late-morning cups of tea, to match the fog curling over the Thames on early-morning runs. Infinity is ten young men and women who snap a salute at him as he strides into the training room. Infinity is the exhale before the long dive. The water beckons_, _calm and cool and quiet. Infinity is striving, and seeking, and finding, and never yielding.

Infinity is this: at the end of that first day, M, calling _007 _in the way he always had, and smiling in response to Bond’s cocked eyebrow. “We had to do something to celebrate,” he says.

“Celebrate what?” asks Bond.

“Your survival, along with the fact that you didn’t kill the rest of us along the way. And the fact that you stayed to train the next generation. You, Bond, might in fact be Six’s first success story.” 

“I’m not sure I follow, sir.”

M only smiles at him again. “The number is yours, 007,” he says. “It will never be reassigned.”

Other men would have scoffed, walked from the room. Other men would have taken offense. But for other men, their job wasn’t their hobby, their love, their life. Other men hadn’t given their blood and their sweat and their tears—not for a country, but for the people within it. Other men didn’t love like supernovae, or burn like fire, or survive quite as long, with quite so much fire leftover.

Other men, after all, weren’t James Bond.

“Don’t you have work to do?” asks M, after a long, long moment. Their eyes meet.

_I think you’re just getting started, _Eve had declared.

“Yes, sir,” says 007, turning on his heel. “I believe I do.”

_“Death closes all: but something ere the end,_

_Some work of noble note, may yet be done.”_

Ulysses- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are at last, the epilogue to Lazarus. It's been a long and wild ride from a story I started in March of 2019, to a fully fleshed out monstrosity, here, and thank you all for coming along for it. 
> 
> The story of Lazarus is not done yet, far from it-- I'm plotting a sequel and some one-shots in the Lazarus-verse, 'Sing to me Finality'. I'm in the planning process for the sequel, and I can tell you now that it will follow the same pattern as Lazarus, with a prologue, epilogue, and three parts in the middle. They are titled INTEGRITY, NECESSITY, and INFINITY. I'm also planning a few one-shots, some involving the Sherlock crew, and one focusing on Bond's new trainees and their perception of Bond and Q's relationship. Whenever I post one, I'll post an update here, so you can know! And they'll all be in the 'Finality' tab as well. If you're desperate, I have a few 00Q one-shots from a few years ago that you can check out! 
> 
> Bear in mind that it took me about six months to get from beginning to posting of Lazarus, since I don't post any long stories without writing a good chunk first (made that mistake before!) so it will likely be a little while. But with the stay at home order still in place where I am, and summer approaching, hopefully not that long. Stay tuned!
> 
> As always, thank you for your love and support! I've always said that my favorite thing is making something people enjoy, and that's still true. 
> 
> With all of my love,  
crescentmoon


	25. Sequel Announcement!

8/7/20

Hello my lovelies! This is just to announce that the promised SEQUEL to this story, called _Ghost Stories, Resurrection Songs, _is now in progress, and you can find it as the second work in this series (_Sing to Me Finality). _Just the prologue is up so far, but more should be posted soon. I hope you all enjoy! 

Thanks for sticking with me, it means the world.

\--CM


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